The Center for Service, Spirituality and Social Justice brought the Dickinson campus a “Week of Kindness” the week of Oct. 26, culminating with an event on Thursday, Oct. 29, offering free food and a poster for passersby to sign.

All week long, posters were placed around campus with information about the event including “10 Kindness Challenges.” These challenges included small acts of kindness such as, “pay for the meal of the person behind you,” “say good morning” or “forgive someone.”

The head of the event, Sydney Cross ’17, said “The idea sprung out of Philadelphia’s Day of Kindness, an event to honor and embrace the Dalai Lama’s commitment to kindness. The Dalai Lama has been quoted saying, ‘My religion is kindness.’”

The entire week was meant to embody the Buddhist ideal of kindness to your fellow beings and to create a “culture of kindness” on campus. Students had the chance to spray paint messages of kindness at the “Tag ‘Em With Love” event, held with the Muslim Student Association. Later they had an opportunity to sign the Kindness Charter, a blank page with the words “Kindness is…” at the top. At the final event at the end of the week, students enjoyed free food and conversation, colored Buddhist Mandela designs and received bookmarks with quotes of kindness.

“The Kindness Charter inspired me, personally,” Cross said. “People were invited to fill the blank spaces of the paper with their definitions of kindness. Some wrote a single word that summed up the idea of kindness for them; others described actions that embodied kindness. The variety of perspectives on ‘kindness’ were observed through people describing an abstract idea of kindness and/or jotting down implementations of kindness in our daily lives. It was so beautiful to see the transformation of a blank sheet of paper to a living testament of compassion on Dickinson’s campus.”