Doing the Right Thing

I don't know if it's the spirit of the holiday season or the importance I see of improving our spirit of service at the College, but I seem to be finding inspiration all around me. A few days after the kind farmer saved our bacon, I saw a television commercial that gave me pause. You know those moments - I've seen this commercial fifty times in the last year or two and suddenly it was as though I saw it for the first time.

Liberty Mutual Insurance launched a campaign about a year ago that continues to have “legs” – meaning that their marketing messages keep evolving while retaining the same central theme. Their current commercials, with beautiful lyrics in the background, offer images that just wash over you and sort of re-tether you to all that is good in human nature. The commercials bring the "random acts of kindness" bumperstickers to life and provide 60 second reinterpretations of the Kevin Spacey/Helen Hunt movie "Pay it Forward.”

As a former mentor of mine once said, "if you can't find it on the Internet, you're not looking hard enough" - and that was pre-YouTube. So it didn't take much for me to find the commercials on YouTube. (Hopefully, your computer will be able to play these short videos.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMwoexR1evo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw97CfZtyGw

Please take a look if you have a moment. I think their campaign captures the essence of what I hope we will become as a College. Using a slight modification of the tag line from the commercials, I would love to have us get to a point where we can say - "When it's people doing the right thing, they call it being responsible. When it's a community college, they call it Mohawk Valley Community College."

I'm still only a "half-year" into my role at the College, so I'd be interested in how far along that path you think we are and what we need to further ourselves in doing the right thing. Let me know your thoughts - presblog@mvcc.edu.