I don’t usually use my precious blogging space to respond specifically to something another person has written, much less something in TEH SPECZ. But the recent thoughtful plea by Sam Roth—“Big Sam,” as we called him in my former days on the Editorial Board—for less self-aggrandizement and more humility and kindness on this campus tapped into such a widely shared concern that it demands more engagement.
Big Sam’s central contention is that, despite the positive energy created by Random Acts of Kindness, “what we really need are Systematic Acts of Kindness.” This claim is hard to deny, and its urgency should be clear to us all. How might we begin to instill a culture of modesty and compassion on a larger scale at this school?
