Leah Thompson – Staff Writer
A Town Hall Conversation on The Compassion Initiative will be held from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 9 in the Saint Peter Room. This community conversation will be led by Junior Kate Dario.
The Town Hall Community Conversations is a new event series as of last year and is sponsored by the Division for Equity and Inclusion. These conversations can be held by staff or students, and focus on an array of topics.
Previous Town Hall Conversations have included a discussion on unconscious bias, sexual violence prevention, and diversity and inclusion. The goal is to have at least one Town Hall Conversation per month, if not more.
Dario came up with this idea last year when she was browsing online and found a project called Compassion Week, a week dedicated to showing kindness and consideration towards others. This week-long event allows people to show their compassion to friends, family, co-workers, professors, and even strangers.
Although Dario wasn’t able to hold a week-long event surrounding compassion last school year, she felt that incorporating The Compassion Initiative into a Town Hall Conversation this year would help students feel a stronger sense of community on campus.
“There has been a lack of communication on campus between students since Covid started. I hope that through The Compassion Initiative students will feel more comfortable saying ‘hi’ to each other when they’re walking around campus to help build back our sense of community,” Dario said.
Dario is a Communications major with minors in Art Administration and Theater Design and Technology. While she’s involved in a sorority, the Adoption Recognition Community (ARC), Pound Pals, the Diversity Leadership Council (DLC), works with the fine arts department, and is in the process of becoming a racial justice facilitator, she recognizes that not everyone is as as involved on campus or knows how to create that sense of belonging.
Through the Town Hall Community Conversation on The Compassion Initiative, led by Dario, the hope is to allow participants to have opportunities to share their experiences and demonstrate how they feel seen and heard in their daily lives. Additionally, the participants will get to demonstrate care and compassion towards others and help restore what Covid took away.
While Dario defines compassion as “The feeling of recognizing the suffering of others and taking action to help them,” she will offer students to share their own definitions of compassion.
During her presentation she plans to split the students into five different groups to discuss questions such as “How do you spread love to those around you?” “How do you treat others in your community?” “What acts of compassion do you do?” “What are you thankful for?” and “What’s something that makes you happy?”
Each group will start with one question on a piece of paper, write their answers on them, then the papers will be passed around the groups until everyone has had a chance to answer each question.
By allowing everyone to answer these questions, it allows students an outlet to reflect on what they do for others and what they could do in the future.
Dario also plans on holding a Compassion Week during spring semester to help build connections on the Gustavus campus not only between students, but staff and faculty as well.
During this intended week-long event surrounding compassion students will be asked to complete a certain number of activities to earn a raffle ticket that will put them in a drawing to earn a prize.
Some of the activities students may be asked to do could include slipping a nice note into a friend’s backpack, complimenting five people, or even holding the door open for someone.
The Town Hall Community Conversation on The Dario Compassion Initiative will occur from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 9 in the Saint Peter Room.