By Anis Shakirah Mohd Muslimin
One campus group aims to spread love and warmth by giving out free hugs this winter.
The Heart Workshop, a University of Iowa organization comprising primarily international students, will be organizing the third-annual “Free Hugs Campaign” on Dec. 2 on the Pentacrest.
Biyun Liu, the president of Heart Workshop, said the purpose of the event is to bridge the gap between international and domestic students on campus and encourage people to go outside their comfort zones.
“In the previous events, we held the campaign in the spring,” she said. “However, this time, we purposely chose to hold it after Thanksgiving, because we would like to help students release their stress [after] midterms.”
She said the group is an international and psychology student organization that aims to help international students overcome their cultural differences by encouraging them to get more involved on campus. The group also works to improve on the mental health of the UI community as a whole, Liu said.
Heart Workshop member Jiahong Xu said the past Free Hug events received positive feedback from the community.
“[School officials] feel like it is a great way to bridge the gap between international students and domestic students,” he said. “In a sense, we can show our image that we are not shy as [domestic students] might imagine us to be.”
Liu said she feels cultural differences make it hard for international students to reach out to their domestic peers. On top of that, the existence of stereotypes between domestic and international students also creates a barrier between the two groups, she said.
“We have different backgrounds and different languages — the language barrier is a problem,” she said. “Also, I don’t know why, but people always tend to stay together with their own group.”
Liu said Heart Workshop is open to all students. Members previously conducted other programs such as the “Stress Buster,” the “Reach into Reach out Photo Campaign,” and the “Secret Garden Campaign.”
The Secret Garden Campaign was held in September. The event allowed people to write down words they wanted to say to someone when they are unable do so in person, Liu said. Participants were then given the choice to either mail or keep their letters.
These programs aim to reduce stress and improve other aspects of mental health for students at the UI, Lin said.
Xu said the group hopes to spread happiness among different people through the Free Hug Campaign.
“We want to break the walls between people,” he said. “A lot of times, we set up this invisible wall between each other so that we can protect ourselves, and at the same time, that kind of broadens the gap, and people will feel lonely over time.”
UI senior Zhihao Chen, who took part in the last “Free Hug Campaign,” said he participated because it was not a common thing to do in China and because he wanted to show love to students who were stressed because of midterms.
“I think the most important feedback that I got is the smile from people after the hug,” he said. “A smile to me is a really strong emotion; it influenced me a lot, it really released me from the stress of my own midterms.”
