AS UNIVERSITY students, we take on multiple identities. We are sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, classmates, teammates and pupils. We are members of the University community, and realize that this membership entails certain obligations: For example, we often invoke the idea of a "community of trust" in our reflections on the honor code. But with our many responsibilities to the University community, we often forget that we are also vital members of the greater Charlottesville community, and thus neglect our broader civic obligations. Yet as an institution, the University does little to promote students' involvement in local affairs -- instead, this duty has been relegated to CIOs and other volunteer organizations, such as Madison House, which are unable to attract all students. It is clear that the University must take more significant strides to integrate community service into its undergraduate curricula if it is to promote civic responsibility among its graduates.
Some argue that the University's existence is enough to help the local community flourish: It attracts brilliant thinkers to the region and attention to the Charlottesville area. Most importantly, the University serves as the epicenter of the region's economy, providing thousands of jobs and stimulating local business. Restaurants, supermarkets and clothing stores, for instance, receive a great deal of patronage from University students. The University Health System alone plays a pivotal role in Charlottesville's economic life.
But it is not enough. While the University contributes much to the region as an institution, we must not fail to recognize that students place a tremendous burden on the entire community which would not exist otherwise. These burdens often present themselves as small disturbances, such as the alteration of traffic patterns on days of home football games, though they are commonly much more significant. For example, the severity of the regional drought of summer 2002 was compounded immensely by the influx of University students in late August. It is not that Charlottesville residents do not appreciate our presence, but instead that we must recognize our unique responsibilities which result from it.
University officials have the potential to expand upon student initiatives already in place and to foster a greater sense of community between students and Charlottesville area residents. The beginnings of this are already in place. At the beginning of each fall semester, a voluntary community service day introduces new students to various community needs by assigning them to assist in one-day efforts to clean local roads and paint park benches, for example. This is done in hopes that students will establish personal relationships with Charlottesville -- but for many, these relationships end soon after they start.
University officials could ensure that this does not happen by redesigning undergraduate curricula to include a community service component in the form of a service-learning program. At first glance, this appears nothing more than a compulsory community service requirement. But service learning entails more than students' disinterested service; it establishes a concrete connection between classroom instruction and the local community's needs. Such an initiative allows students to invest themselves simultaneously in both their educations and their surroundings, and to actualize their classroom knowledge. For example, Urban and Environmental Planning students could work with VDOT officials to analyze how game-day traffic disrupts local traffic patterns, and to seek solutions which would minimize these disruptions. Studio Art students might engage in a community beautification initiative.
Service-learning is by no means a new idea. Many universities have already implemented such programs. The University of California at Berkeley's Service-Learning Research and Development Center, already in its eleventh year, aims to "increase student learning, increase students' motivation toward school, build students' awareness of the society around them, provide opportunities for students to explore career options, build students' self-concept and self-esteem, and foster collaboration and unity among students of different races, ethnicities, and beliefs" through its programs. In this respect, our University is far behind.
It is time that University officials wholeheartedly embrace a service-learning strategy. Above all else, they should insist on instilling feelings of civic responsibility in graduates of our institution. Many of our professors have already done so. In her Rural Poverty common course, History Prof. Grace Hale requires that students complete 20 hours of community service over the semester's course, for example. Service learning benefits not only the community, but also students, by encouraging our future participation in community affairs. Often, the most important lessons are those we learn outside the classroom.
Todd Rosenbaum's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at trosenbaum@cavalierdaily.com.
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