Core 305 classes at the University of La Verne should be optional. Forcing community service on students does not encourage students to volunteer in the future.
If people are forced to do something they do not want to do, a wholehearted effort is unlikely to be put forth.
The effort level given by someone who has been forced into volunteer work is small compared to that given by someone who decided to help out of a pre-existing, genuine concern for the cause that is being helped.
In high school, I knew several people who refused to run the mile in P.E. class because they were forced to, but then sprinted to exhaustion after school was out and baseball practice began. They wanted to play baseball, and accepted the running as a part of achieving that goal. However, they failed to see running as being an integral part of their education. Such is the case with service learning.
This is not to say that everyone enrolled in a Core 305 class is giving less than 100 percent. Certainly some people are interested in making the world a better place for everyone, and are willing to give their time.
This is encouraging, and I hope one day I will also find it in my heart to give my time to help those who need it. I am taking my Core 305 class, in which I must read to children for 25 hours, with an open mind. I consider it to be an opportunity to have an experience that I probably would not otherwise have at this stage in my life that might lead to more service.
However, many people do not look at the service-learning requirement in the same light. I can understand their frustration, too. Why, they ask, should you be forced to help out someone that you do not genuinely feel like helping? To do so is to be untrue to yourself and those who you are helping. If I told the teacher and her second grade students I am reading to that I was doing something I did not want to do, do you think they would even want me to stay? I doubt it.
ULV’s catalog explains that the aim of supervised volunteer service placement is to practice the University’s Mission Statement’s affirmation that “service is a primary goal of the educated person.” It is almost laughable to think the University believes that making us work for 25 hours without compensation will incline us to do future volunteer work.
The motivation for an individual to habitually offer help to our society can only come from their own heart. No amount of forced service can bring about the maturity and compassion one needs in order to realize that community service is a civic duty.
In fact, some students are embittered from being forced to swallow their Core 305 pill to graduate, and have told me that they will be less likely to perform future volunteer work because of it.
If ULV considers service to be a primary goal of the educated person, perhaps a course focusing solely on demonstrating why service is so important is in order. Then, after we understand why some consider service to be of such paramount importance, if we felt compelled to do so, we could perform community service. As it is, we are put to work doing what we are told is an important service, but are not given the opportunity to determine that for ourselves. We learn about a specific problem in society, such as illiteracy, but for most the focus of Core 305 classes is to finish 25 hours of service.
I hope to one day find that I am ready to do volunteer work for noble reasons. However, most students forced to perform service do not have the interests of others in their hearts.
Agke Grow, a junior journalism major, is sports editor of the Campus Times. He can be reached by e-mail at growa@ulv.edu.
