In a world rooted with hate, it’s refreshing to see some positivity once in awhile. Kiley Seivert, a Lockport senior, made a big impact on the school in the week before finals. Students flooded bathrooms to see Kiley’s big project that had unfolded earlier in the day: Post-its covering the walls with positive comments. Kiley speaks of her inspirations behind the task in this exclusive interview.

What was your inspiration behind putting up the post-its?
“I was walking behind a group of girls in the hallway, and I could hear their conversation. It was all trash talk about different girls and I decided to do a positive thing. After some brainstorming and researching ideas, I found a scholarship about hanging positive quotes in public bathrooms; I decided to go along with it. The scholarship only need 10 notes, but I thought 10 wasn’t enough, so I made 330 notes.”

How did you find all of those quotes?
“I’ve always been a fan of quotes. Each note had a different quote, whether it was from my collection of favorite quotes, or some quotes from books.”

What would you say was the overall reaction you got from students around the school?
“I was really surprised. I didn’t think that it was going to get the recognition that it got. I thought it would just be a passing thing. Something that girls saw but didn’t act on, but many girls took some; many added new [notes]; and many took one and replaced it with a new one. A lot of people were really happy with it. When most of my feeds were full of it, I knew it was bigger than I ever thought it would be.”

Has anyone reached out to you about the project?
“I’ve had [students] track me down, whether it be on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, or actually during the school day.”

How do you feel knowing that it has moved on to Post-its at Central’s bathrooms too?
“I honestly never thought that it would ever move to Central. I actually didn’t know that it was at Central until a teacher who knew I hung them told me they were at Central too. I’m proud that someone was brave enough to follow in my footsteps like that. I know I would never have done that when I was a freshman. I wasn’t even brave enough to talk in class, so thank you to whoever continued it.”

Other than hanging Post-its and giving her ideas for how the Post-its would read, Kiley completed the project completely on her own. She gives special thanks to students Katie Henke, Taylor Tomky, Peyton Williams, Tim Behland, Amir Abdallah, and Kolbe Kruczek for their help.