At the end of winter quarter, you may know everyone’s deepest, darkest secret.

A comparative history of ideas (CHID) focus group is organizing a project modeled after PostSecret.com, an online community art project where people from all over the world mail anonymous homemade postcards that reveal personal secrets for the first time.

The two-credit student facilitated focus group is entitled “PostSecret: The Realm of Public Secrets.” This course functions as a discussion forum for issues related to PostSecret, said Maia Williams, junior CHID major and student adviser for the group.

The group meets once a week for one to two hours to discuss ethical and philosophical questions, such as whether criminals should be allowed to use PostSecret to confess crimes, student Heidi Williams said.

Each CHID focus group is required to produce a “product,” which can be anything from writing papers to doing a group project, the latter being what this focus group elected to complete.

The project, entitled CampusSecret, is modeled on the original art project, but differs in some key ways.

Although the CHID project employs the same idea of collecting anonymous postcards with secrets on them, the participants will be restricted to the UW community; only students, staff and faculty can participate.

“The project will have more of an impact if you know the community,” Maia Williams said.

This restriction eases collection of the post cards, but also will reveal (anonymously) secrets specific to the UW and hopefully create a sense of community.

Heidi Williams said reducing the pool of potential senders “brings its even closer to home” when people who read the postcards realize that their peers may share the same fears, hopes and weird habits.

Postcards may be dropped off at boxes located around campus and also can be mailed to a secure address. Each box is designed by an individual member of the class.

“I wanted people to have an example of what PostSecret is, because some people haven’t heard of it,” said Heidi Williams, who designed the box located in Padelford with images from PostSecret.com.

Unlike PostSecret, which is an ongoing project, CampusSecret has a tentative deadline of the first week of March, for the purpose of creating a (hopefully) permanent art installation on campus. Additionally, scanned images of the postcards will be posted online.

Heidi Williams’ installation idea is to place the postcards in books in the UW libraries, so that the secrets would be slowly discovered over time.

As those familiar with PostSecret know, the secrets range from silly and mundane to tragic. Heidi Williams noted that sometimes the cards serve a therapeutic purpose, as they are avenues through which you can admit something to yourself.

Heidi Williams said she has made many postcards with the intention of mailing them in to PostSecret, and although she lost them or never mailed them, the act of creating them was enough.

“Maybe someone will read a secret and because of it, be nicer to people,” she said.

[Reach reporter Sonia McBride at news@thedaily.washington.edu.]