Dialogue hosted as part of International Education Week
What is compassion? Can you feel it without acting on it? Can you act compassionately on your own terms?
Students and members of the academic and religious communities discussed these and other questions Monday night in a dialogue, “The Roots of Compassion in Science, Faith and Civic Engagement,” hosted by Multicultural Student Affairs and Interfaith Initiatives as part of International Education Week.
“Service is a human obligation to do … Goodness is an innate necessity for us all,” said Claire Kimpton, a fourth-year international studies student. “I think it brings us back to what compassion is. It starts with a passion.”
Guest speakers at the dialogue were Mary Carlisle, director of Campus Scheduling and Special Projects at Columbia College; Bradley Smith, associate professor who works in the Psychology Services Center at USC; and the Rev. Dr. Herman Yoos III, Bishop of the South Carolina Synod.
The speakers identified different definitions of compassion and explained what compassion means to them. They said almost every religion talks about the importance of compassion, but they all have different motivations for it. Actions tend to speak louder than words when it comes to compassion, they said.
The three speakers encouraged the students to speak out on different questions regarding compassion and to include their own service-learning experiences in the dialogue.
“I think service is very important when you pick something you like to do,” said Steven Nicholson, a third-year psychology student. “Compassion and service helps so much to humanize people. It kind of gives them a reason to continue.”
The group also broached the topic of the different ways to show compassion and debated whether or not people can be compassionate and not act on it.
“The way that you show [compassion] doesn’t matter,” Kimpton said. “When you’re compassionate…I feel like those people will show it in another way. It’s different for everybody. It doesn’t fit just one mold.”
Smith said he learned about the importance of communication in acts of compassion. He shared a story about an organization with good intentions that spent time on a service that was not even needed by the group it wanted to help.
“I think one of the most important pieces of service and compassion is communication with the people you’re serving and learning from them,” Smith said. “When you’re really meeting a community need, you’re meeting a community need that they want to be met in a way they want it to be met.”
The students and the speakers questioned whether or not something is truly compassionate if someone only wants to do it on their own terms. They discussed the difference between working with someone and for someone.
Carlisle spoke of her experiences working with two groups with virtually the same idea who both refused to give up their own opinions in order to collaborate.
“Collaboration isn’t something that I see a lot of, whether it’s organizations or volunteers. It’s kind of, ‘This is what I want to do,’” Carlisle said.
One of the major discussion points that students said they would take away from the discussion was the need to listen more, even though it is one of the hardest aspects of compassion to demonstrate.
“We have two ears and one mouth, and I think we need to start listening twice as much as we talk,” said Gavin Weiser, assistant director of Multicultural Student Affairs.