March 20, 2011 - 4:32pm
Campus Club: Do Random Acts of Kindness
BY JENNA SIMARD
It was during finals week of his freshman year that LSA sophomore Hans Dalton first saw the University of Michigan’s chapter of Do Random Acts of Kindness at work.
“They were handing out treats and lovely notes to people studying there,” Dalton said. “I just thought that was so cool that during the most stressful time of year, people were willing to give up their own time in order to make others happy.”
DoRAK, which was founded by then-University student Anne Kellogg Reed in 2001, has sought to spread kindness on campus through acts like distributing cocoa and carnations to students in the Diag on Valentine’s Day and preparing pancakes for passersby in Mason Hall.
The University’s chapter of the club is divided up into separate teams that hold weekly meetings. Each team has a designated captain, who decides the random act of kindness the group will perform for the week.
Kinesiology senior Katie Barz, a director of DoRAK, said after joining the club she was amazed at the uplifting attitudes of the other club members.
“I love that everyone in the club has the same mission to spread kindness,” Barz said. “It’s hard not to get along with people like that.”
DoRAK collaborates with other student organizations like Circle K and K-Grams. The campus club also adopted an iPhone application recently called DoGood, which was developed by the company Mobil33t .
LSA junior and club director Chris Dietzel said the iPhone application has taken off and spread the message of DoRAK.
“We have had thousands of people download the app worldwide and have about 2,000 people check off that they have done the deed each day,” Dietzel said. “DoRAK is responsible for creating and supplying the daily deeds for the app and also interacts with the users, taking suggestions, and working them into deeds.”
“I enjoy the reactions, from a simple smile, to people who genuinely come up and thank you for something you’ve done,” Dalton said.
