As a counterpoint I am clinically depressed, attempted suicide when I was in HS, and am generally a sad bop taken human form. At the time I still hadn't figured out the whole socializing thing and was lonely AF going off to college with no friends no support network. I joined one of those groups after running into them a bunch. While I was a member (and eventually officer) we were voted "best student org" so somebody clearly liked us.
The majority of our group was definitely in the camp of "I want to give to other people the help I needed." We ran a stupid amount of events -- everything form mental health counseling with the campus counseling services people, collabs with a queer healthcare providers, open dinners with free catered food, cooking classes, open parties on weekends which alternated between dry/not-dry, sponsored (like one of their friends would contact us) dorm cleaning/decorating to deal with depression tornadoes, open study sessions during exam season, we had "rent-a-spotter" (obviously actually free) in the gym for people who didn't anyone to go with, a few of the guys were in the campus runners club so they did open morning jogs, holiday parties for people who couldn't or ya know couldn't go home, and yes standing in the quad with signs giving out high fives and hugs.
That sounds like an awesome group and I wish that was what was happening at my college. If for no reason than to get a spotter for the weird times I worked out at hahaha. I'm curious how the high fives and hugs thing worked, because it sounds more uhh, consensual?
I'm gonna temper myself here because there's always the chance that there was some quiet resentment and discomfort we never knew about but from the inside these events were super successful. You are absolutely right that consent was like priority #1, #2, and #3. We always set up somewhere where people could easily avoid us entirely if they wanted. There's never any pressure it was like like "happy Friday, high five!" very low-key and if they weren't into it just pretend it never happened. And that kind of thing did happen but it wasn't super common, we had a bunch of regulars who would seek us out, professors loved it.
We could have done without these kinds of events but they were super visible and honestly the best marketing we had. We never pitched other events while we were there but it got people to recognize our fliers and look us up on IG/the club website.
The majority of our group was definitely in the camp of "I want to give to other people the help I needed." We ran a stupid amount of events -- everything form mental health counseling with the campus counseling services people, collabs with a queer healthcare providers, open dinners with free catered food, cooking classes, open parties on weekends which alternated between dry/not-dry, sponsored (like one of their friends would contact us) dorm cleaning/decorating to deal with depression tornadoes, open study sessions during exam season, we had "rent-a-spotter" (obviously actually free) in the gym for people who didn't anyone to go with, a few of the guys were in the campus runners club so they did open morning jogs, holiday parties for people who couldn't or ya know couldn't go home, and yes standing in the quad with signs giving out high fives and hugs.