Tue 15 Mar 2005
The Transcript has a feel good article on the volunteering activities of Williams students in the local community, including good stuff on Marisa Doran ‘05, Matt Piven ‘07 and others. It’s Eph-tripe, but nobody loves Eph-tripe more than EphBlog.
However, not to be a cynic or anything, but the opening paragraphs seem suspect:
There are people who believe that college students just play video games, blast their stereos, and party when they are not attending classes or cramming for exams. Although that’s true in some cases, many students spend their free hours in constructive pursuits.
At Williams College, more than 20 percent of the students work as volunteers with community-based organizations, including Habitat for Humanity, Berkshire Food Project, and Berkshire Farms Center.They’re busy, but they make time
More than 20%? Color me skeptical. Are there really more than 400 students who help out at places like Berkshire Farms? If true, that would be amazing.
I suspect that it isn’t really true, that there are many fine and caring students who spend many hours helping out in the local community, but that there are not 400 of them. I wonder where the reporter got that number. I’d wager that it came from someone (Rick Spaulding?) with an interest in praising volunteer work but who included every student who ever expressed a passing interest in Lehman Community Service Council. Or maybe the 400 includes blood donors.
So, how many students do volunteer, say at least 8 hours per semester, to “serve the regional community”? (Giving campus tours, as I did, does not count.) EphBlog wants to know. Perhaps students today are much more generous and involved than they were 20 years ago.
March 19th, 2005 at 7:20 am
This is an interesting, detailed (and encouraging) report on civic engagement, including community service, at Williams:
http://www.williams.edu/resources/commservice/Civic%20Engagement%20at%20Williams–Princeton%20Review%20Guide.pdf
Williams was ultimately one of 81 schools selected for Princeton Review’s Colleges With a Conscience guide, I imagine in large part based on the information provided by this report. Certainly possitive publicity for the school once this is released.
I think fighting the purple bubble effect is one of the greatest challenges facing Williams in any generation. I do believe the college has been working hard on this issue on many fronts, many of which are detailed in this report. In particular, I think admissions, by admitted more students through programs like Questbridge and by increasing percentage of urban and international students on campus, and the curriculum, by encouraging experiential programs like Williams in New York, the teaching program, leadership studies, and community externships during Winter Study, can go a long way towards combating the self-involvement that comes all too easily in an environment as shut off from the rest of the world as Williams, and in a place where the demands on students’ time, both curricular and extra-curricular, are so high.
Also, I think the school has done a fantastic job of bringing in more high-profile speakers (in particular through the Williams College Debate Union, which is a truly fantastic way to spark campus engagement) in the last year. I think the more resources devoted to bringing in any speaker who will inspire campus debate about social, political, artistic, scientific issues, the better.