The Undergraduate Council of Students is partnering with student club Art for Service to create a mural thanking dining workers for their work during the Dec. 13 mass shooting and recent snowstorms. The mural will incorporate student-written notes and will be displayed in the Sharpe Refectory.
“After all the tragedy that happened on Dec. 13, you can definitely see that there (has been) such an outpour of love and support to the dining staff and to everyone who helped the student body,” said Natali Chung ’26, senior advisor for Art for Service. “We don’t want to forget what they did for us.”
Many dining workers previously told The Herald that they did not receive active shooter training to prepare them to respond to the Dec. 13 shooting. Still, during the lockdown, dining hall staff provided students with updates on the police response and served dinner around 10 p.m.
In late February, a record-breaking blizzard hit Brown and dining workers slept on army cots in the Ratty and the Verney-Wooley Dining Hall.
The UCS previously hosted an event where students were invited to write letters to anyone who helped the community during the Dec. 13 shooting, UCS Community Engagement Director Renee Kim ’28 explained.
Currently, there is a board in the Ratty where students could write messages on sticky notes to the community, Kim added, noting there are already many messages from “a lot of people (who) are amazing.” The UCS wanted a way to preserve the sticky notes and they decided to reach out to Art for Service to help create a mural, she explained.
“If anyone wants to be involved or make a message to be (included) in the mural, we’re still actively taking sticky notes to make that,” Kim said.
The club hopes that the mural will only take a couple of weeks to assemble, according to Hannah Moon ’27, Art for Service co-president. All students, regardless of prior art experience, are invited to contribute to their projects, she added.
Hannah Alcasid ’27, co-president of Art for Service, described the mural as a “great representation of us as a community.”
“This isn’t just a project done by just one group. It’s multiple people included from all different grades, all different genders (and) sexes,” she said. “It’s a bit of a fun, loving expression of art.”
Kim emphasized the breadth of services Brown’s staff provides for students. “When I’m home in my dorm, I’m able to have access to clean bathrooms because facilities (are) able to come here and clean it,” she said. “I have access to healthy food and sustainable food, again, because someone put in all that effort before me to do so.”
“It’s so easy to forget that there’s so many people and faces behind it,” Kim added. “It will mean a lot to have a way for students to directly thank (workers with) a physical show of appreciation.”
