The lessons of community commitment day

The recent Community Commitment Day has certainly opened my eyes to the pros and cons of community service. It may seem that there are only pros to community service and it is true that there are only pros to the service side of it.

Well isn't community service about service? During Community Commitment Day this past Welcome Week, it may have been hard to reach that distinction. On the last day of summer, before beginning another long school year, several hundred dedicated students got up early for what was to be an 8:30 start to a day-long commitment to service and to their community. It was not advertised as a commitment to lectures, informing children about why they should go to college, participating in an online service tracking service, waiting in lines or riding in CABS buses with drivers who don't know how to negotiate the city of Columbus.

Two years ago, when I was a freshman, Community Commitment Day was exactly what's its name implied: you sacrificed your last day of summer and for freshmen, your first day of the freedom of college, to go out and serve in your community. This past year, volunteers waited in line for registration and waited in the Mershon Auditorium for special guest speakers. The speakers, despite their individual good intentions, should never have been invited to speak in the first place. Ohio State students know the value of service, which is why over a thousand of us came in early in the morning to volunteer. We don't need to be motivated any further. If anything more opportunities need to be provided just to harness the incredible energy of the students here on campus and their drive to see real change happen in their community, whether that be east of High or around the world. The speakers know how great the students are and they should have let us show our community that as well.

An event that ended late in the afternoon could have utilized the hundreds in attendance for hours and hours of service, but by the time it was all said and done, the group I volunteered with volunteered for a grand total of less than two hours. An approximately six-hour event with less than two hours of total service. That fact alone is incredible. The people I volunteered along side of, the organization that we volunteered for, and the people we met while doing it were all extraordinary and the work we did helped our community. 

It is unfortunate that it didn't help more.