A UA Facebook page dedicated to spreading positivity among Wildcats has garnered more than 1,700 likes in a week.

“You light up my life and everyone else’s too. Keep doing what you’re doing, cause you’re going places,” read a post to Garrett Voge, a senior studying accounting and management information systems.

Voge had heard about the compliments page, but was surprised when he was tagged underneath a post about himself on the UA Compliments page.

“I was a little bit surprised, but really excited that someone wrote something so nice about me and it was anonymous,” Voge said. “This morning I went and read a bunch of them and they’re all really nice and warm-hearted. I think it’s a really good idea.”

The idea for a university compliments page stemmed from a student suggestion given to ASUA Senator Vinson Liu during his office hours on the UA Mall. A student mentioned a social experiment Queen’s University did in Canada in which people sent out anonymous compliments.

Liu, a physiology sophomore, researched the idea further and decided to open a UA compliments page on Nov. 27. A week later, more than 1,700 people have liked the page.

“I think it’s pretty incredible because that is almost 5 percent of the student body,” Liu said.
The process to have a compliment posted is relatively simple: students message the page what they would like to have posted and then can tag the person when the compliment is posted.

Liu said the page typically receives about 100 messages each day. In order to keep from flooding the Facebook news feeds of those who like the page, Liu said compliments are posted at 10 a.m. and then again at 10 p.m.

Although Liu launched the Facebook page, he turned control over to someone else once people found out he was the moderator. He explained he wanted to maintain anonymity for the page.

Some students commented that the anonymity is one of the best parts about UA Compliments.

“It’s important that your friends tell you stuff, but when it’s anonymous it might be from a stranger, someone who looks at you from afar and sees these things,” said Alexandra Holt, a psychology senior. “It’s really cool to be able to communicate with someone that maybe you don’t know that well through the page.”

Holt received a post that included, “Knowing you makes me feel lucky. You are not only beautiful on the outside you’re beautiful on the inside.” She said the post caught her by surprise.

“I never thought that I would be on that page ever just because there’s so many people that are doing it, and someone thought to put me on it,” Holt said. “I was just really excited and truly touched that someone thought that stuff about me.”

Liu said his goal is to reach 10 percent of the campus and promote the Facebook page next semester. He said he would like to do greek visits and encourage friends to post it on their club pages.

“It’s really nice seeing all these random compliments and just people doing these random acts of kindness,” Liu said. “It’s not going to change textbook costs or anything like that, but it’s something simple and effective. I’ve seen so many people really get excited, get empowered by these messages. It’s exciting.”