Noah Baron, Associate Editor
Ideology: Religious Progressive | Writing From: New York, NY

As we start another election year (even though we’ve just had one!), things are bound to get nasty (yet again). Mudslinging ads will be released, scandals will be researched and leaked, people – including myself – will begin to lose whatever respect for the government and candidate that remained before it all started.

At the same time, we are bombarded with page after page of bad news in the papers. We receive e-mails about deaths of our fellow students. As our faith in humanity slips in this golden age of technology and information, I think it’s time to take a look at those people who selflessly devote themselves to making the world a better place.

I don’t necessarily mean those who go into war zones and risk their lives, or humanitarian doctors who pay their own way to places like Sudan to look after the suffering. Are they heroes? Yes, they are. But today I want to talk about the many who, too often, go unnoticed.

For example, a couple of Octobers ago, a freshman in a Nova Scotia high school was, according to a Canadian news site “harassed, threatened, and taunted with homophobic epithets” for wearing a pink t-shirt on the first day of class. I think we can all agree, regardless of opinion of homosexuality, that this is cruel. So did two seniors at the high school. Outraged, they went out that night and spent their own money on something between 30 and 50 pink t-shirts. They handed them out the next day at school in a show of solidarity with the freshman who had been picked on. “It was a very pink day [at the high school] that’s for sure,” they said.

I read that article a long time ago, but I never could never really forget how amazing I thought those two kids were. Then, earlier this evening, I ran across an article on the website of a local ABC station. Apparently, thousands of people have started to network about an issue that is rarely discussed – the 100,000 missing people, and the more than 10,000 unmarked graves in the United States. Each of these networkers has adopted a John or Jane Doe and works tirelessly, even after working eleven hours at a factory in one case, to restore to them their name. To some, this might not sound terribly important, but, as one grateful family member described it, “It was the best piece of mind in the world…Just to have a grave to visit means everything when you have been wondering for so long.”

And last year, a man named Julio Diaz was held up at knifepoint by a teenage boy as he stepped off the subway. While most people might have just handed over their things, and some might have fought the kid, and others might have later called the cops, Julio did something few would have thought to do: offer to take his mugger out to dinner. At the restaurant, he tried to talk some sense into him, and when it came time to pay, Julio offered to pay if the kid gave him his knife. The teenager complied.

Meanwhile, an article on AsiaOne news tells us a number of similarly heartening stories. One in particular caught my eye: for one television show, a contestant was told to walk down the street in nothing but his underwear. For a prize of $50,000, he had to convince passersby to “literally give him the clothes of their back.” If your faith in humanity is flagging, take notice: more than one person was willing to do this in order to help contestants win that money!

Doing things like this might not get you on the front page of the New York Times or on the Daily Show, but I think it’s time we all stop and think about how we can each make our world better — just like the people in the stories in this piece did. If each person committed one small act of random kindness every day, the world would be a lot better. Plus, don’t all who complain have an obligation to do what they can to fix what they see as broken? As I’m sure we’re all aware, that’s everyone.