In her column "Pay It Forward" (Apr. 9) Nina Maja Bergmar offers a misguided solution to a community service "problem" that she has invented by misreading the actions (or inactions) of her fellow students. She argues that since "our learning experience is limited to the how-to-become-successful indoctrination that takes place within the Dartmouth bubble," a community service requirement should be enacted aimed at "the personal development and maturity" of students.
I fully agree that any educational institution should provide an environment for growth and maturity to all its students. Bergmar's plan, though, misunderstands the developmental trajectories of most college-aged students and how community service factors into those changes.
Bergmar frames her experience on an Alternative Spring Break to New Orleans as a "reality check," a way "to challenge" herself and "to witness America through a different lens." She does acknowledge the chance "to make a difference," but she clearly values service for its ability to provide "a more realistic perspective on life." This personalized viewpoint towards community service reflects upon the social development and maturity of adolescents around our age as we begin to see the world in new and ever more complicated ways.
A project or trip may seem like an 'eye-opening' or 'life-changing' experience precisely because it can solidify the ongoing shift from a narrower, more self-centered perspective to a broader, member-of-a-society perspective. But most aspects of college serve similar, if less dramatic, purposes: the plunge into a new environment, the encountering of new books, the selection of a major, the influx of new opinions and beliefs, and -- quite contrary to the classes to which Bergmar attributes a "lack of exposure to social issues" -- the classes we elect to take. Service fits into this scheme of development but does not provide the only means to achieving this level of social awareness and new perspective.
And in any case, our maturity does not stop there. As we continue to develop through college, our idealism dims -- and for good reason -- because we realize ASBs and off terms are not the solutions to the world's problems. Our perspective shifts from having gained a sense of ourselves within the complexities of society to seeing ourselves outside of society, able to form opinions with a more discerning and often critical eye.
More and more, complications and questions arise within us about the status quo -- in terms of community service, we may wonder about the value of the changes these projects actually make, the cultural dilemmas that arise from entering a new and unique community and the long-term results they may provide. Once we've developed a significantly complex perspective of the world, service no longer is a field trip to see this world.
The important questions that frame our altruism may become: Is it better to simply send money to this place so people there can help themselves? Should I become a doctor? Or a politician? Or a teacher? What do I really know about these people I want to help? A community service requirement does little to address these questions.
The "academic and emotional understanding" that Bergmar calls for from our College is certainly something that any school should strive to provide, no matter what the age group. But let's not overlook the fact that these two strands of development go hand in hand, especially at college. There are two issues at stake here: One is that the development of students at this College is inadequate; the other is that students here do not do enough community service. Whether or not either of these statements is true (and I think the success of ASBs, Tucker Fellowships, Humanitarian Engineering and DREAM etc. prove the latter false), we can't mistake the first as a symptom of the second.
