Campus Community Challenge

But I think that cause weeks have the potential to be much more effective than the Editorial Board suggests. When a group promotes a cause week or the USG promotes the month of service, they are not trying to limit discussion to that week. A week of highly visible events can help students gain perspective, pique their interest and serve as a jumping-off point for more involvement with the organization. It seems as if the goal of cause weeks is completely opposite to what the Editorial Board proposes — rather than an attempt to fully address all of the intricacies of an issue, a cause week is an attempt to open a dialogue. After this, the ball is in our court.

In an ideal world, everyone would be interested in giving back all the time and wouldn’t require any external rewards or praise. But the month of service confronts a reality — the current approach to cause weeks or months is the most likely to get students interested and motivated, if only for a short time. In providing many options for one-time service opportunities and fostering a spirit of friendly competition through prizes awarded to those who have logged the most service hours, the USG is bound to get people involved in service who otherwise would not have been involved. The worst that can happen is that people who otherwise never would have done any community service get involved for an hour or two this month and never get involved again. But the best that can happen is that people who have never tried community service before find a passion for it and stay involved.

Continued service does seem to be the actual ultimate goal of Campus Community Challenge — the flier explains that the purpose of the event is to “encourage you to engage in service” and “make service opportunities more transparent.” The Campus Community Challenge is structured somewhat like an interactive student activities fair — the hope is that you will try a bit of everything and pick one activity to stick with. Although the event is marketed to students as a month-long time period, the service opportunities listed on this flier are all weekly reoccurring. The website for the Campus Community Challenge also points students toward a weekly project, listing weekly projects first on their list of ways to get involved, followed by one-time service opportunities.

But outside of especially promoting reoccurring service opportunities, there is still room for the USG and the residential colleges to emphasize that service is not something that you only do for a month. For example, I recently received an email from Forbes about a joint service trip with Whitman into New York. The residential colleges often feature trips to Broadway shows or sports games and could make service trips a larger and more frequent part of their event schedule. The USG could even continue the Campus Community Challenge throughout the year, rewarding the residential colleges who have tallied the most service over both semesters. Even if initiatives like the Campus Community Challenge aren’t perfect, they are valuable. Their hope is that students will use these events to become informed — and once students know about service opportunities and have had enough positive experiences, they will be more likely to stay involved.

Sarah Schwartz is a freshman from Silver Spring, Md. She can be reached at seschwar@princeton.