Nataley Davis | features Editor
 
Through gloomy skies and misty rain showers on Sept. 21, colorful chalk drawings of peace symbols were displayed on Academic Walk.

Campus Minister Linda Donovan has planned an initiative to celebrate the International Day of Peace on campus for the past 15 years.

Though dark clouds weren’t what she hoped for this year, Donovan was determined to have a physical sign of peace for the community to see — even if it were to get washed away.

“I decided that it was planned, it wasn’t raining or pouring, and so we were gonna go,” she said. “I think it’s really important.”

Beginning with a candlelit mass on Sept. 11, Duquesne’s Spiritan Campus Ministry wanted to foster reflection, faith and acts of peace on each of the 11 days leading up to the International Day of Peace, Donovan said.

Meghan Wholley, a senior at Duquesne and student web worker for campus ministry, posted a word on their Instagram from the St. Francis Peace Prayer everyday, which is a prayer that asks God to use the speaker as an instrument of peace.

Each post also gave people a peace challenge related to the word, a small way to incorporate peace in their lives.

Some were as simple as, “Do something that brings joy to someone else today” or “Have one conversation today where your only goal is to listen.”

“I feel like peace is something that we need to practice every day, and I think the 11 days of peace highlights that and highlights ways that we can do it,” Donovan said.

The culmination of the 11 days was “Chalk the Walk,” where anyone was welcome to grab a piece of chalk and draw or write something that symbolizes peace.

Donovan said that the international symbol of peace is the Peace Pole, a structure built in different parts of the world that reads, “May peace prevail on Earth” in several languages. It was important to her for that to be portrayed in the chalk drawings.

Sophomore Jimmy Green, who is part of Donovan’s men’s group bible study for Delta Chi at Duquesne, said he volunteered to draw the Peace Pole because he has some art experience from high school.

Other men from the group gathered around Green to draw, and some passersby joined in.

“I think there’s a lot of crazy stuff going on in the world right now, and this is a good anchor and reminder that we’re all people and human,” Green said. “We had a bunch of different people drawing today, just coming out and hanging out.”

Donovan and Wholley also worked together to create puzzle pieces to display words of peace around campus over the 11 days.

They put blank puzzle pieces in Brottier Hall, the Mary Pappert School of Music and the campus ministry office with information about the International Day of Peace and what words to include in their drawings.

“A lot of the students were really excited to color and come up and talk about it, so it was really cool to be able to have a sense of community,” Wholley said. “Maybe it will cheer them up a little bit to know that people are promoting peace and that people care about peace, even just on a campus level.”

Donovan said she hopes these small acts and reminders of peace around campus spark inspiration on ways to lead a more peaceful life.

“I hope they stop, I hope they look and I hope they become aware of some of the words that we’ve used and how to put those into action in their life,” Donovan said.

Nataley Davis can be reached at davisn5@duq.edu