At the end of an hour, Frank Warren had at least a dozen students on their feet sharing, what else but, their secrets.
One young man spoke about his mother’s death, then turned and promptly left.
“I felt really bad for him, because he just said it and then just left, like that was the only reason why he came,” said Jill Hankemeier, a communications major at the UI.
And that is arguably the draw of PostSecret, a website whose creator kicked off his tour of more than 20 college campuses — including one in Mexico — at the UI on Tuesday night.
The University Lecture Committee invited Warren to speak.
By 6:45 p.m., all of the seats in the IMU Main Lounge had been filled with people eagerly awaiting the speaker. Thunderous applause greeted Warren, who took the stage to the song “Dirty Little Secret” by the All American Rejects.
Warren approached the microphone in a burgundy shirt and jeans. For the next hour, he talked about other people’s secrets, ranging from a girl who didn’t feel she was beautiful to a woman who put up her child for adoption.
“There are two kinds of secrets,” he said. “There are secrets we keep from other people and the secrets that we hide from ourselves.”
PostSecret is an online art project that exhibits postcards containing thoughts of people across the globe. Some are amusing, others dark, but Warren receives them all at his home in Maryland.
Warren has received more than 150,000 postcards — which he personally opened and read — since 2004. Some address secret desires, others criminal behavior or naughty lifestyles.
After selecting a few poignant postcards every Sunday, he uploads them onto his weblog PostSecret.com. After he created the website in 2005, he became known as “the most trusted stranger in America,” which he proclaimed at the lecture.
While the secrets are safe with Warren, he doesn’t exactly ignore some of the more disturbing issues he reads in the postcards, such as abuse and suicide. Warren has directed resources toward addressing grim issues he reads about in the postcards.
In five years, the PostSecret community has raised $500,000 for suicide prevention. Warren even got All-American Rejects involved. In 2005, when the band used the cards from PostSecret in its music video, Warren suggested the band donate $2,000 to the National Suicide Prevention Hotline rather than pay him for permission to use the material.
Before concluding the presentation, Warren listened and responded to student’s secrets and questions.
“It was amazing how quickly he created an intimate atmosphere within that room.” said UI student Tim Unger, who studies cinema.
The 20-year-old said it would normally take months to reach that level of intimacy with an audience.
“I almost felt like getting up myself,” Unger said.