F I) l C A I I () N
TRENDS
IRA WYMAN
On* to 006: Harvard senior Tim Sheiner tutors inmate Lou Martee for Phillips Brooks House
Doing Good
Students are signing on for community service
again in impressive, effective numbers
At first glance, Georgetown Univer
sity senior Mark Fox could be mis
taken for any Yuppie-in-training:
his rugby shirts and fashionably
faded 501 jeans might brand him
as just another guy with BMW’s on the
brain. But this premed student is not mere
ly another material boy. lnsteud of whiling
away his Saturday mornings sleeping off
hangovers, he leads 17 other Georgetown
students into the blighted neighborhoods of
nearby southeast Washington, DC., to
spend time with inner-city kids, catching a
matineeat KennedyCenterorjust tossinga
ball around. And despite thestereotypingof
his peers as varsity apathetes. Fox says he is
not unusual. "Sure, some [students] are ca
reer oriented, some are party animals," he
says. But many, he finds, "see something
besides a career as the goal of their under
grad uate ed ucat ion. ”
Like thousands of students nationwide,
Fox is trying to personalizesuch monumen
tal causes as poverty and hunger by getting
involved in community sendee A surge in
all varietiesof volunteerism is now energiz
ingcharitable projectaat schools across the
nation, where students are showing up in
greater numbers than at any time since the
1960s. At Harvard, for example, 56 percent
of the class of ’86 said they participated in
public service, compared to 35 percent in
1983. AtTulane,CACTUS(Community Ac
tion Council of Tulane University Stu
dentsi has become the most pop
ular extracurricular activity,
with 6(X) students—more than
double the number of just two
years 1450—involved in every
thing from tutoring slum chil
dren to providing medical care
during MardiGras. At DePuuw
in Greencastle, Ind., students
even pay for the privilege of liv
ing in Third World privation
while participating in aid proj
ects And at many schools, the
trend is being encouraged with
credits, fellowships and grants.
This fresh crop of do-gooders
tends less to starry-eyed inno
cence or zealotry than its prede
cessors Remarkably diverse,
these helpful students come
from all political persuasions—
alt hough they’re all more likely
to seek M R.A.’s thun martyr
dom There are Keaganauts
who want government out of
tht* welfare business os well as liberuls who
wear their bleeding hearts on their sleeves.
The majority probably fall in the neutral
category, according to Sister Nancy Ann
Flumerfelt, a sociologist who advises both
political and nonpolitical groups at Michi
gan’s tiny Aquinas College "They are very
comfortable collecting cans forcharity, but
they're not comfortable trying to deal with
what agri-business is, or why the family
farm is going under,"she declares.
At the bottom line, these pragmatic ide
alists an- finding ways to pencil compas
sion into the timetables of their careers,
making the spirit of events like Live Aid
concrete, and gaining a sense of belonging
in the bargain. Some, it must be admitted,
are looking for a dash of public service on
their resumes. "Altruism is chic," jokes
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Feeding force: Columbia-Barnard students make lunch at a church near campus