In the nation's service

But few will talk as excitedly about summers spent doing service domestically, “in the nation’s service.” Boulder, Colo. just isn’t as sexy as Bhutan.

For this reason, more should be done to emphasize domestic service as a summer option.

Certainly, international community service has its place. Christina Laurenzi’s work on maternal- and child-health projects in South Africa or Abigail Green’s on women’s healthcare in Nicaragua — two accomplishments recently awarded Princeton’s $30,000 ReachOut fellowship — should be commended, along with those that do work on any number of other important international issues. But this emphasis on international service sometimes comes at the expense of a focus on equally important domestic issues. For example, funds like the Class of 1978 Foundation and the Class of 1995 Summer Service Fund do exist for domestic community service, but not exclusively — indeed, the list of these sources of funding is located on the OIP website, suggesting they are primarily meant to fund international ventures. Problems like access to education, clean water and reliable healthcare aren’t confined to the third world, however.

My summer, for example, was split between Paris, where I took courses through a Columbia exchange program, and my hometown in North Carolina, where I started an arts camp for local high school students with Lewis Center for the Arts funding. While Paris is admittedly a far cry from the third world, it was nevertheless striking to me how foreign my own hometown felt after being abroad, how little I knew about the educational and socioeconomic problems in my hometown — indeed, at my former high school. One example stands out. One morning, one of my students, a large Hispanic boy with a goatee, stifled a yawn. “Sorry,” he said. “My mom had to drop me off at six this morning on her way to work.” Camp didn’t start until nine, but because funding for arts classes in the high school had been cut, this was his only opportunity to participate in something like this for free. Getting to school before dawn was simply the way things had to be in his family, a fact of life I’d never considered in high school given that my own mother worked part-time and my family had an extra car I drove to school.

These kinds of experiences, I would argue, are as valuable as the eye opening ones offered by international travel and service work, and they have the additional benefit of challenging our preconceived notions about our own often-privileged upbringings.

Additionally, many of the benefits of international travel — like language skills and a “new perspective,” however defined — can be found domestically. The most obvious example is the plethora of opportunities for Spanish speakers in everything from nonprofit work to healthcare, particularly in the southern half of the country, where immigration levels are particularly high. Moreover, without the added costs of airfare or, if people choose to live at home, of housing, more funds could be put towards the community service efforts themselves.

Before you attack me for ignoring the value of international experiences, let me just say that my goal isn’t to encourage the many Princeton students who take their service overseas to stay home for the summer. Still, on an institutional level, more should be done to encourage domestic service. Such encouragement could take the form of summer funding exclusively for work in the United States or in students’ home countries, but it could even manifest itself more simply, by, say, having a summer service showcase during the fall semester at which both international and domestic experiences were presented.

The University does a great job of encouraging its students to think outside of our nation’s borders, but more could be done to turn our gaze homewards at the same time. With fresh eyes, Boulder might just become as sexy as Bhutan.