How it All Started:
At a weekly National Residence Hall Honorary (NRHH) meeting, Cam Salvador and Eric Ramos were given the opportunity to write letters for the national organization More Love Letters. In spreading love through kind words, an idea was born. Cam and Eric wanted to bring this love to our campus and create an organization dedicated to spreading love through letters. Through many dorm room conversations, Cam and Eric realized that this was something that could be real with a little work and dedication. They set off to find the perfect team of people to get this organization off the ground. They brought the vision to Nicole Goodman, Katy Larson, and Zach Nunnikhoven. Together, they contemplated being a collegiate campus affiliate of More Love Letters, however, they realized they wanted to make a bigger impact by focusing on their own campus community. Through many brain-storming sessions, they all came to the idea of developing their own letter nomination system and adapting it to UNI’s community. While that has been the primary goal of the organization, they also wanted to find new, unique ideas on how to spread kindness and bring it to UNI’s students. The organization also wanted to help people on their journey in loving themselves, so they incorporated “self service” nights where people were given the chance to focus on themselves. With all of this in mind, months of planning, completing administrative work, and lots of excitement, their vision of creating change on campus was slowly becoming a reality.
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Where'd you get the name "Make the Change?"
Believe or not, as simple as the name “Make The Change” sounds, it wasn’t our first idea. We bounced around between different names, some better than others, before landing on the name we hold today. For about a month or two we were “Panther Positivity” before realizing that wasn’t a name we felt suited us. After we had decided that “Panther Positivity” was not going to cut it, our team took a couple days to brainstorm some different name ideas and would come back together to hopefully choose a new name. To be quite honest, we never would have gotten to this name if it weren’t for an episode of Jane the Virgin. I was watching an episode that just happened to be playing on TV when the quote “when each person loves the other as much as himself, it makes one out of many” was said. The quote immediately struck me so I typed it into google and did a little research. It happened to be a quote by Marcus Tullius Cicero, an ancient Roman orator and philosopher, from his written work titled Di Officiis or On Duties/On Obligations. Cicero wrote this work in the form of letters to his son in which Cicero outlined what he thought were the best ways to live, especially within society. I fell in love with the quote and the message it was sending. I wanted to pay a tribute to Cicero in some way, so I bounced between “The Cicero Project” or “The Marcus Mission,” but didn’t like how those sounded. I was stuck, then I looked at his initials and it hit me... M-T-C, Make The Change! I took the name to our executive team and the meaning and symbolism was exactly what our organization needed. It was also a bonus that Marcus T Cicero just happened to be a writer of letters and that was the whole basis of our organization. Thus, Make The Change was officially born.
So, in all honesty, the person that we should be thanking for the name is Ivonne Coll’s character Alba Villanueva from Jane the Virgin. So, thanks Alba for helping us find our mission! |
- Eric Ramos, MTC Vice President 2018-Present