UAlbany shares their secrets

  As he stood up on the stage of the Main Theater in the Performing Arts Center, with only his computer and cellphone, a couple of postcards, and a bottle of water, Frank Warren stated to the attentive audience, "I've been called the most trusted person in America."

   But if you have ever told him a secret you know this is true.

   Every week Warren, the founder and creator of the PostSecret Project, gets over a thousand postcards delivered to his home in Germantown, Maryland. "I think my wife has this fear that 30 years from now we'll be retired in Boca Raton or something and we'll continue to get postcards, [that] we'll never be able to escape the world's secrets," he joked before his presentation last Tuesday. Warren was selected as the keynote speaker to highlight the University at Albany's sexuality week. The first performance for seven at night sold out almost immediately, which prompted a last minute 10pm performance to be announced as well.

   With UAlbany as one of the many stops along his spring tour, the businessman turned best-selling author has decided to bring his inspirational words to college campuses all across the US to share some anonymous secrets and the wisdom he has gained from them. After receiving secrets from countries like New Zealand and Hong Kong, he definitely has worldly wisdom to bestow upon the rest of us.

   "We're in this generational shift right now...I think young people today are much more courageous about talking about the parts of their life that their parents would never want to share," an aspect that makes presenting at college campuses so rewarding for Warren. His goal on each campus is to make a safe and non-judgemental environment where everybody in attendance can express themselves openly, part of which he achieves through sharing personal parts of his own life to make everyone else feel relaxed enough to open up as well. At one point during the evening he played a voice mail from his mother after her asked her if she wanted a copy of his latest book, too which he revealed to every one that she in fact did not, she was not pleased with it.

   Warren confessed that his father doesn't really understand what he does and his mother considers it all diabolic, but to many others he has been a life saver.

   The history of PostSecret seems like a far-fetched tale at times. One man single-handedly gives out postcards to random people and challenges them to do something incredibly personal – share a secret that they've never told anyone to a complete stranger. It started as an experiment – it could have easily failed and all the participants could have kept their secrets to themselves. But there is just something too tempting to human nature to keep something juicy to ourselves. The sharing of the secrets are meant to empower the revealer and the people they are shared with.

   At first the secrets were posted in art exhibits, they didn't always go up online. But soon the project took off and very quickly Warren would receive huge bundles of secrets in the mail. He also started to receive plenty of media attention. In 2005 The All-American Rejects donated $2,000 to the Kristin Brooks Hope Center which is also a part of the national suicide hopeline, in order to use postcards from PostSecret in their music video "Dirty Little Secret." That same year Warren published his first book, "PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives," a montage of postcards including some not on the website. In 2006 USA Today called Warren the "all around media "it" boy of the moment." In 2007 PostSecret was named the Weblog of the year.

   His latest book, "Confessions on Life, Death, & God," (2009) is the inspiration for the exhibit currently on display in the Lab theater of the PAC. The two glass displays weave a story of people's faith, doubt, and longing for some kind of faith in their lives, whether it be religious or purely spiritual.

   But the most striking part of the exhibit is the very first display upon walking in. On a wall to the left with a simple spotlight on it holds postcards from strangers confessing secrets of all kinds. They range from the typical topics Warren recieves: desires, embarrasing moments, loves and hates, but in a way they are all connected; they all come from UAlbany students.

   Freshmen Daniel Greenberg relayed, "I think it's great to know people can share their secrets. Some of them are relatable and hit home so its really cool."

   "Yeah, because some secrets you don't really want to share but this is annoymous," fellow freshmen Tom Krisa added. Greenberg heard of PostSecret through Krisa, who heard about it from his girlfriend.

   But the connection that really hit home between Warren and the UAlbany community was his talk about his work with the Kristin Brooks Hotline.

   "Reporters rarely ever ask me about secrets that have to do with lonlieness [or] self-harm...and I get a lot of those secrets," he expressed. Just a week before his appearance to the campus, freshmen Jacqueline Imbro took her life. Imbro had purchased a ticket to the PostSecret event for Tuesday night. "Once you start hearing these statistics, you know the statistic that 12% of all college students in a given year at some point will think about taking their life, if we can talk about this and feel those realities that are out there I think we'll work harded to find [the] solutions that are out there." Although Warren receives sensationalized or "juicy" secrets, many don't realize how much work he also puts into trying to help others see how much life is worth living.

   "This is the riskiest part of my talk right now, because I am going to try to tell you a joke about suicide.." he continued. He proceeded to tell a story about a reporter who interviewed suicide survivors who tried to throw themselves off the Golden Gate Bridge. When the reporter asked the survivor why he let a bystander talk him down the survivor replied, "When I got up on to the bridge I realized that I was on the wrong side, so I tried to make it to the other side but I was afraid I was going to get hit by a car." A light laughter filled the theater, but the seriousness of Warren's words had still sunk in.