Thanks and giving

For Confucius, personal virtue was cultivated through the practice of ritual; that is to say through certain customs and traditions, we are taught and reminded of the proper way to live.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, perhaps we should focus on what this holiday teaches us and how we can apply that lesson throughout the year – not just when surrounded by family and football.

In the words of W. T. Purkiser, a scholar, writer and preacher within the Church of the Nazarene: “Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving.”

As very blessed college students, we should use our privileges and fortune to give back. The role played by service in the local community is undeniably beneficial.

President Barack Obama has made advocating service a priority of his administration. This past summer, he launched the United We Serve initiative and signed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, which will increase the size of AmeriCorps from 75,000 to 250,000 members by 2017 and will create a Social Innovation Fund to improve the efficiency of service projects.

He also signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which included $201 million in funding for the Corporation for National and Community Service in order to support an expansion of AmeriCorps State and National and AmeriCorps VISTA programs.

He isn’t the first president to realize the betterment of both the community and the individual that is a corollary of community service. President Richard Nixon advocated the Senior Companion Program, asking Congress to “expand the role of low-income older volunteers who provide person-to-person services.”

President George H.W. Bush in his inaugural address spoke of “a thousand points of light, of all the community organizations that are spread like stars throughout the Nation, doing good.”

And President Bill Clinton signed the 1993 National and Community Service Trust Act, which created the Corporation for National and Community Service. 

But community service must also be advocated on the local level, and there are few avenues more apt for service encouragement than universities.

The IU Office of Service-Learning lists 22 courses in 17 departments that offer credit for service. They range from “Service-Learning in Chemistry,” in which students may visit after-school programs and demonstrate elementary chemistry concepts, to “Topics in Psychology: Real World Program Evaluation: ‘Applying Psychology Research to Service Learning, Focus on Battered Women and their Children,’” which requires psychology students to volunteer weekly at Middle Way House and The Rise.
IU could do more, however.

If the University required service-learning credits for graduation, much like the distribution requirements such as A&H and N&M currently needed for most bachelor’s degrees at IU, more students would have a real incentive to become involved in local charities and organizations. The hope would be that after finals are over and the three credits of service-learning are earned, students would continue to volunteer.

My high school required 40 hours of community service right along with senior English and geometry to nab a diploma. The requirement made everyone get involved – and once they did, many people chose to continue their service even after their requirement was met.

We should not forget that this Thursday is as much about giving as it is about thanks. The holiday should remind us that we should all do what we can to make our community better – not just now, but throughout the year.

The service I did for my diploma was one of the most valuable educational experiences I had in high school. IU should afford its students the same opportunity to step out of their comfort zones and offer a helping hand. Most students will probably take a lot more away from a service-learning requirement than they will from suffering through a semester of Finite – and the Bloomington community as a whole will reap the benefits.