Twenty-five Thompson Scholars in a freshman-level sociology class experimented with breaking social norms Friday by offering “free hugs” on Union Plaza north of the Student Union.

It was a class project assigned by Lesa Johnson, a doctoral candidate who teaches a section of Sociology 101 limited to students in the Thompson Scholar program.

“The Thompson Scholars came up with a cool idea, focused on giving hugs and encouragement,” she said. “It’s not normal to give a stranger a hug or ask them if they want a hug.”

Thompson Scholars, chosen for their academic performance and financial need, receive scholarships from the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation. Susan T. Buffett was the late wife of Omaha billionaire Warren Buffett. The program is named in honor of her father, who was a professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

More than half of Thompson Scholars will be the first person in their family to earn a college degree. Many come from diverse backgrounds. More than 1,000 students on campus are Thompson Scholars, with 260 first-year students participating in a learning community. They take classes together and many are housed together in Harper Residence Hall.

Hug recipients included high school seniors and their parents, participating in Red Letter Days campus tours, a couple of Army ROTC students, and even a couple of Wisconsin fans in Lincoln for Saturday’s game.

The students also handed out slips of paper with encouraging statements.

Davielle Phillips, a senior architecture major from Chicago, was the recipient of a group hug.

“I think it’s really good,” he said. “Sometimes people feel down on a gloomy day. It gave me a reason to be happy.”

Elisabeth Geren, a Thompson Scholar from Lincoln, appeared to be the most active hugger in the group. She gave everybody in a Red Letter Days tour group a hug and rushed across the plaza to be the first to hug Army ROTC student David Safarik, a junior nursing major from Hyannis, Neb.

Geren said she had hugged at least 20 people in the first 10 minutes of the class, which began at 9:30 a.m. and ended at 10:20.

“Actually, I’m really shy,” she said. “This is something I’d usually avoid. I’d go around the Union so I wouldn’t have to be hugged.”

But her classmate, Elizabeth Otto, a native of South Sudan who now lives in Lincoln, wasn’t really getting into it.

“I’m not a hugger – I give encouragement,” she said. “I’m really uncomfortable hugging someone I don’t know.”

Michael Klopp and Dallas Jipp, both from Omaha, said a couple of their friends were waiting on the plaza to be hugged Friday morning.

“Yeah, it’s a little uncomfortable,” Klopp said of the hugging experiment. “But there’s things we could have done that were far more uncomfortable. We can do this.”