2008 Woodie Awards
Community service at Vandy, without the community
Mike Maio
Issue date: 2/5/07 Section: Opinion
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Pick up any university literature - an admissions brochure, for example - and what you read will likely contain language about the "Vanderbilt community." Calling ourselves a community is an excellent way to appeal to prospective students. It carries connotations of friendliness, unity. But as is often the case, rhetoric belies reality.
More than half of the 240 students who signed up for the Martin Luther King Day of Service on Jan. 15 ended up cancelling within the two days prior to the event. The Day of Service, organized by junior Donna Rizzo, junior Amy Silverman, sophomore Amanda Herber and senior Samora Legros, brought together over 100 students representing 18 student organizations to participate in community service projects around Nashville in honor of Dr. King (full disclosure: the Orbis staff participated). But the organizers were forced to cancel several projects when scores of registrants dropped out at the last minute, including about 100 from Delta Delta Delta sorority.
It's tempting to view the cancellations as symptomatic of an apathetic attitude toward service among students, but that's not the case. The Princeton Review recognizes our student body's commitment to service by listing Vanderbilt among its "Colleges with a Conscience," a distinction attributable to the multitude of service-oriented groups on campus. In fact, the women from Tri-Delt who did end up participating built connections with the Junior Achievers Center, and a group of seniors from the sorority plans to return there with their "little sisters" this weekend. The fact that so many students dropped out of the MLK Day of Service points to students' lack of commitment not to service, but to each other.
Vanderbilt has arrived at a point where breaking commitments is a socially acceptable and sometimes guiltless endeavor. The Day of Service cancellations illustrate what most students who have been here long enough already know intuitively even if it is often unacknowledged: that probably a majority of the students here are not invested in Vanderbilt as a community. This fact is most starkly reflected in Vanderbilt's perennial ranking among American colleges with the least interaction among groups of minority students, but the university's recalcitrant self-segregation is just one aspect of the more fundamental problem of an absence of true community.
More than half of the 240 students who signed up for the Martin Luther King Day of Service on Jan. 15 ended up cancelling within the two days prior to the event. The Day of Service, organized by junior Donna Rizzo, junior Amy Silverman, sophomore Amanda Herber and senior Samora Legros, brought together over 100 students representing 18 student organizations to participate in community service projects around Nashville in honor of Dr. King (full disclosure: the Orbis staff participated). But the organizers were forced to cancel several projects when scores of registrants dropped out at the last minute, including about 100 from Delta Delta Delta sorority.
It's tempting to view the cancellations as symptomatic of an apathetic attitude toward service among students, but that's not the case. The Princeton Review recognizes our student body's commitment to service by listing Vanderbilt among its "Colleges with a Conscience," a distinction attributable to the multitude of service-oriented groups on campus. In fact, the women from Tri-Delt who did end up participating built connections with the Junior Achievers Center, and a group of seniors from the sorority plans to return there with their "little sisters" this weekend. The fact that so many students dropped out of the MLK Day of Service points to students' lack of commitment not to service, but to each other.
Vanderbilt has arrived at a point where breaking commitments is a socially acceptable and sometimes guiltless endeavor. The Day of Service cancellations illustrate what most students who have been here long enough already know intuitively even if it is often unacknowledged: that probably a majority of the students here are not invested in Vanderbilt as a community. This fact is most starkly reflected in Vanderbilt's perennial ranking among American colleges with the least interaction among groups of minority students, but the university's recalcitrant self-segregation is just one aspect of the more fundamental problem of an absence of true community.
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
Charles Sumner
posted 2/17/07 @ 12:39 PM CST
Perhaps there is no "progressive community" at Vanderbilt. The ACLU chapter faded when students graduated. There have been no comments to this story in almost two weeks. (Continued…)
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