Keep an eye on this new class of graduates. There’s something special about the Class of 2018.

It didn’t matter which commencement ceremony you might have attended. Invariably, you heard the same words describing one unique characteristic inherent to every student body: kindness.

It was the first and overriding piece of advice imparted to Seneca Valley graduates by their superintendent, Tracy Vitale.

And it was one of the last words mentioned at one of the final commencements, the one at Mars, uttered by 16-year-old graduate Deepayan Patra, who thanked his older classmates for accepting and helping him feel at home.

“I want you to remember that the best part of each and every one of you is your kindness, and it is the quality that I hope will define your future,” he said.

Kindness was echoed in the words of Sarah Schmidt, a graduate at Slippery Rock High School, as she exhorted her classmates to strive beyond the security of community.

“We must leave behind the safe place we have used to learn and grow,” Schmidt said. “Find what you stand for and actually do something about it.”

Allegheny-Clarion Valley Superintendent David McDeavitt remarked of his 56 graduates, “This class is one of the most sincere and genuine I’ve ever worked with.”

And at Butler’s commencement, student speaker Camden Seybert cited the same characteristic. “At Butler, people are nice. As silly as it sounds to you, Butler is the best place we could have chosen to grow into the young adults we are today.”

Is this universal kindness and compassion some phenomenal coincidence? Maybe. But consider the age in which the Class of 2018 grew up.

Many celebrated their first birthday in the shadow of the 9-11 attack. More than a few felt the sting of a mom or dad serving away from home in the military.

Their early teenage years were marked by lingering recession and chronic unemployment, intermingled with an ultra-high tech culture and allure of sophisticated gadgetry that’s too easily equated with status.

An older generation of politicians wages verbal battles, spending billions on attack ads, without much heed for the concerns and issues affecting young people, who watch and read the biting, hurtful comments of their parents and grandparents on social media — then wonder why so few of them take part in the actual elections.

Finally, they have seen too often the effects of crazed armed individuals violating the sanctuary of a school campus to wreak bloodshed, as if the carnage were a video game and body count was the way to keep score.

Where previous generations of school pupils practiced fire drills, this class was among the first to conduct the lockdown drill.

Maybe a mantra of kindness is imperative in an age when violent acts occur so frequently. Maybe, as Tracy Vitale said, being kind is just the right thing to do. That’s not really a point worth debating.

Kindness is the cloak that adorns the Class of 2018 in Butler County and, we suspect, across the United States. We pray that the mantle of kindness fits and serves them well in the coming years and decades.