‘Iolani perfectly carries the warm and welcoming aloha to students with all the animals like dogs, cats and birds. As we all can see, ‘Iolani has an intense competitive environment both in sports and in academics. However, these animals always live their life carefreely, and teach us how to enjoy our lives. Accordingly, all the animals have some kind of effect on students and faculty, especially for animals appearing on the ‘Iolani campus.
According to News in Heath, spending time with cute animals is able to help us decrease the amount of cortisol (a stressed-related hormone) and diminish the problem of blood pressure. In the morning, we can see birds sleeping on the grass under the shining sunshine. During lunch, we can see the cute dog “faculty” Indy wandering around the campus. After a long day at school, dogs and cats owned by Reslife houseparents are brought out to reenergize the exhausted students. Senior student Yuria Kumura ’24 said that “Whenever I feel stressed about study or work, these animals make me feel much more comfortable.” In addition, animals can also provide a certain degree of social-emotional support. Griffin Gadre ’26 shares an insightful opinion on these loving and carefree creatures: “They are not worried about life, why would I worry about life.” No matter what happened, life is still going on, and this is something we can learn from these cute animals.
Indy has been a part of our ʻIolani community for five months, and he truly brings a lot of emotional support to all the students. The reason for Indy being on ‘Iolani campus is that Megan Ikeda ’23, who graduated this past school year, conducted research about campus pets. Her study has shown that animals in school are beneficial to mental and emotional health, and simply stopping for even a few seconds to pet Indy on his campus walks has allowed students to change their mood from bad to good again. Chaplain Morehouse explained that “We all need a signal that we do not have to earn everything in life, and we all need to be loved.”
In the end, we can say these animals always give their emotional support to the ʻIolani community but take nothing. Chaplain Morehouse says, “No matter what, if you had a bad day, if you failed your test, if you had a fight with your friend, Indy is like a living symbol of love and acceptance, same as other animals in ʻIolani.”
