Our View: Students need to look at community service as their responsibility – not an assignment.
Hundreds of Howard students engage in community service projects each semester, spending their time tutoring children in inner city D.C. schools, preparing meals at homeless shelters and picking up trash off of Georgia Avenue. It’s a wonderful sight, isn’t it?
It’s heart-warming to see young people being proactive and positive, giving back to the community that they belong to.
But in some cases, students engaging in community service activities aren’t doing so for the right reasons. Unfortunately, it seems as though resume building may be one of the main reason students get involved in community service, instead of genuine interest and concern for the community.
Countless organizations require prospective members to be active in the community to gain membership. Through career building services, we’re instructed that as students, community service is an integral and necessary part of any well-rounded resume. Before we even arrived at Howard, our high school counselors were pounding the importance of community service into our heads as it related to the college application process. Being involved and giving back to the community is supposedly representative of a well-rounded individual, knowledgeable and qualified in areas other than academics.
For these reasons, the emphasis placed on the importance of community service is directly related to students looking at community service as necessary assignments or chores.
That’s not to say that all students involved in community service do it only as a means of boosting their resumes. Howard’s campus is certainly brimming with individuals who have genuine concern and interest in the community service related activities they’re involved in.
But hearing things like, “Girl, do you know someone who’s having a community service project this week? I need a couple hours for this program,” is pretty off putting. Everyone should be involved in some sort of community service, not because they need it for a class, but because they have a responsibility as an active member of society to give back to the community.
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