Together We Can Make a Difference

When Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) speak at Columbia on Thursday, they will speak about service, not politics. Both candidates have built their political careers on service done early in their lives. McCain served in Vietnam, has been an ardent supporter of the military, and is now a leading advocate of the Iraq War. He will use his military service as he drums up support throughout his campaign for hawkish policies. Obama, on the other hand, served as a community organizer in Chicago for some of our nation’s most disenfranchised people. He will use this experience as he campaigns on a platform of economic uplift, workers’ rights, and educational support. Two different forms of service produced two very different candidates.

What does service mean at Columbia? Community Impact, the University’s main service organization, boasts 25 student groups with over 950 volunteers. Columbia Community Outreach brings together hundreds of students each year for a day of action across the city, as do the annual Relay For Life and CU Dance Marathon. Add to these groups the Double Discovery Center, dozens of organizations such as Peer Health Exchange and Engineers Without Borders under the auspices of other governing boards, service initiatives undertaken by fraternities, sororities, and athletic teams, and countless actions of individual students who participate in service without a formal group, and it is clear that service is at the heart of Columbia student life.

Yet Columbia’s administration is out of sync with this pulse for service. Surely University President Lee Bollinger stands at CCO each year and lauds our combined efforts, and the University has donated its most lusted-after commodity—space—by giving a few offices in Earl Hall for Community Impact and a headquarters in Lerner for DDC. But in terms of monetary and visionary support, I am disappointed to say that the administration does not commit enough to the needs of service-minded students and the service-deprived community.

Indeed, every year Community Impact is forced to turn down over 10 new group applications simply because of lack of funds. Ten groups would add as many as 400 new volunteers, impacting thousands. Students’ desire to serve is not nearly satiated, but the administration remains noncommittal.

I would like to think that the administration is unable to support community service, but I believe that they—due to misplaced priorities—are actually unwilling.

For example, last year Community Impact was ecstatic and grateful to receive $20,000 for a new fellowship program, a major step forward. But that amount of money was, in my view, almost insulting compared to the $100 million fundraising campaign for the Athletic Department announced at around the same time. Let me note that Community Impact’s base of 950 volunteers is roughly equivalent to the number of varsity athletes at Columbia.

Why the discrepancy—an ambitious $100 million campaign versus a mere $20,000?

Maybe it’s because the chairman of Columbia’s board of trustees, Bill Campbell, is a former Columbia football coach. Or maybe the administration is simply out of touch, clinging to an idea of what other colleges are with oddly central emphases on varsity sports. They are ignoring the reality of what this college is and should be—a thriving engine for community service (and also a hotbed of excellent club sports teams). Varsity sports are of course important and need our support, but the University must update its priorities.

In New York City we are positioned, in a way that none of our peer institutions are, to have a large, lasting, and positive impact on surrounding communities. The University should realize this and work to expand volunteer opportunities with Community Impact and the many other service groups on campus. We should focus intensely on career education in service and nonprofits that lie outside Jeffrey Sachs’ “holy” brand of sustainable development. We should support and encourage our faculty to offer more and better service-learning courses. We should create a new type of university that, in the tradition of the GI Bill and the revamped admissions policies of the ’60s and ’70s, exemplifies the idea that higher education should not be but a training ground for future professionals and graduate students but an engine of service and social uplift, where students are fundamentally changed by their college experience to be actively positive members of humanity.

So when Bollinger listens on Thursday to two men whose lives have been built on service and one of whom will be the next president of the United States, I hope he thinks of the service done by Columbia students. I hope that on Thursday, someone mentions Community Impact and the great work we do before a national audience, and I hope the whole day inspires even more students to get involved and make a difference. But more than that, I hope Bollinger listens to what is said about service and puts his money where his mouth is, so that this year we won’t, once again, have to turn down deserving and earnest students who want to participate. So we can truly say we are Columbia University in, of, and for the City of New York.

The author is a Columbia College senior majoring in environmental biology. He is public relations officer for Community Impact.