Dickinson is about to get a whole lot kinder.

Student Senate officially approved a new club called the Random Acts of Kindness Club on April 9, 2015. Ilana Unger ’15, the club’s founder and president, said that she created the club to improve the sense of community at Dickinson. “Throughout my four years at college the strong and close knit community at Dickinson has been a huge part of my experience here.  But I think that community is something that can always be improved on,” she said, adding, “I just want to put smiles on people’s faces!”

According to Unger, the Random Acts of Kindness Club is supposed to “Recognize individuals and groups who aren’t normally recognized, just because people deserve it.” She added, “We believe it would be beneficial to help open up people’s perspective to realize that there’s more on campus than their busy lives, and help students’ development as more involved citizens in Dickinson College’s community.” Possible events the club could sponsor include: Pay it Forward at the Peddler, where students pay for the person behind them in line, or going around to bathrooms and putting sticky notes with compliments and phrases to promote body positivity, described Unger. “We want to become a club on campus that is focused on spreading kindness and happiness, but in a subtle, meaningful way.”

Unger explained that the inspiration for her club came from an art project she did last year. “During the spring of junior year I was in an art class entitled ‘Sustainable Practices in Public Art.’ Our last art project we did we created an art piece that was focused around social sustainability that engaged the Dickinson community in different ways,” she said. Describing her personal art piece, she said, “I created a Random Acts of Kindness Well that was placed outside the bottom of the HUB.”

Unger explained her reasoning for creating the well, saying, “When I started thinking about what I wanted to do for this project I had many different ideas but I knew I wanted to do something that was centered around building community at Dickinson. I feel like being at college we get so caught in our busy lives and sometimes forget to think about others. We are running from one class to another and it’s easy to get caught up in the business that consumes at school.” She added, “I created the well to be an outlet for people to do random acts. I put the well out at the end of the semester and the school wanted to keep it out so it was also there throughout senior week.  I got a lot of amazing feedback and people seemed to really enjoy the well. It was fun to see how people interacted with the well!”

Unger emphasized that Random Acts of Kindness would be beneficial for the community: “It helps students become more involved with the community at Dickinson College and will really make them see things in a more positive, happy perspective.”