"Required" public service? Is it hazing?
 

I agree with this CT newspaper editorial. Forcing someone to do something would be hazing, if XYZ chapter of GLO did it.

EDITORIAL: Colchester (CT) school board mandates public service


By: July 05, 2002


Mandating public service is forced labor which is no longer volunteerism.
It's unsettling how the exposure to feel-goodie, do-goodie, fuzzy-wuzzy liberalism can sometimes be much like crawling through the paddle run at a fraternity rush.
These days, it's a whack here and a whack there from the post-Clinton, post-9-11 neo-liberals who are increasingly imitating neo-conservatives in proposing and enacting bothersome new laws that mandate us to pledge the allegiance, worship the American flag, subsidize religious institutions or donate some of our spare time to those in need.
Because elected officials often do ridiculous things to children -all in the pious name of education - that they wouldn't dare do to adults under any circumstances, the Colchester Board of Education recently voted to make 10 hours a year of so-called "community service" a requirement for high school graduation. In a 3-2 vote, the school board decided that teenagers, in the manner of indentured servants, should be required to perform tasks normally funded by taxpayers or performed by volunteers who have a far nobler purpose than pleasing elected do-gooders. (Remember Rev. Sung Young Moon's mandate to smile and all the thousands who complied?)
In their narrow and foolish vote, the board has managed to:
1.Permanently degrade and corrupt the meaning of local "community service."
2.Forever guarantee that the town of Colchester can never again proudly point to a wealth of "student volunteers."
3.Completely disregard free will and individual rights (both too easy to do when it comes to minors) which includes the inalienable right to be selfish, to not want to "volunteer" and/or not be part of a social experiment that is really an insidious reversal of child labor laws.
4.Guarantee that future generations of Bacon Academy students will have a perverted, if not cynical, view of what it means to perform public service.
5.Infringed on student's private lives by dictating the use of their private, off-school time.
6.Failed to logically state why any governing body would mandate something which was already occurring naturally.
7.Put Bacon students on the same level as those (usually donning orange jumpsuits) whose "public service" is also mandated - by the state Department of Corrections.
Luckily for opponents, the school board's new mandate fails to address their main concern which dealt with precisely when this volunteer work is to be done. This surely opens the door to a court challenge to determine if any school board can dictate "extra-curricular" activities and whether such activities can or should ever be used as a graduation requirement. There could also be a court challenge on the issue of mandating "volunteerism."
Ironically, attorneys who specialize in tort, labor, civil rights and Constitutional law and those pesky trial lawyers seem to be more esteemed by liberals and are usually the bane of neo-conservatives.


©Regional Standard 2002

I went to a Catholic HS and we had to do 100 hours of community service in order to graduate. I actually enjoyed it. It got me out into the community and showed me the real world.

I think it's OK to include community service as part of an educational experience. It teaches more than book learning possibly could IF you take it seriously.

Hoosier you take alot of heat, but this may have set the candle on the cake!

If the Brothers do not want to be part of the Group and be asked to do something for Charity, then do not join in the first place!

Hazing you ask? Is it hazing to ask members of the Greek Org to Participate to do better for others?

It is not a Right to be a Memeber of a Greek Organization but a Privilage.

We as Greeks do more for others than anyone else!

LXA has Its North American Food Drive, the largest in the world! Is That Bad? NO!

I have to agree with Tom. In this particular instance, if the situation were about a GLO instead of a high school, I don't see how it could possibly be construed as hazing. Community service is something all members participate in, not just new members. Also, no organization that I know of hides the fact that their members do community service.

Besides, if required community service were hazing, my service sorority, as well as APO, GSS, OPA, and all the other service orgs out there would be based on hazing. :eek:

I also think it's a good idea for high schools to require this, but then again, I did join a service sorority, so that's obviously a priority for me. :)

10 hours of community service in four years?!

I think that it's important to teach kids the value of service. Especially today when I see a lot of, for lack of better terminology, spoiled brats who spend 20 hours a week just hanging around the mall.

I know a lot of students who were required to do community service to graduate high school, and most of them enjoyed it. I did it, when it wasn't required, because I enjoyed it.

As for GLOs... no it's not hazing to require members to participate in service. The prospective members are well aware of these requirements before they join. That's a big reason why a lot of them join GLOs in the first place.

Oh, and the article isn't very well-written. The author is throwing around terms like "neo-conservatist" & "neo-liberal" without any obvious clue what s/he is talking about, politically. Let me guess, it's a high school student who doesn't want to spend 10 whole hours helping their community?

IS it voluntary?
 

the gist of this is not "Is public service good?" It is.

The gist is should it be required? It should not.

If you go to a private school, and they publish the requirements in advance, it's your choice - enroll or go someplace else.

If you go to a public school (elem., high sch., college) and the government/administration requires you to do public service, it is unpaid servitude (usually a part of the common hazing definition).

If LXA wants to do public service, and collect food, I love it, and I hope they gets lots of good publicity. If they tell prospects/members in advance that "we are all going to participate in collecting food", they have made it a choice: "Don't join if you are against collecting food."

The next step is for the public school to publish it's list of "approved" public service projects. These liberals will probably say it's OK to "volunteer" at the abortion clinic, but not OK to "volunteer" teaching an NRA gun safety class.

And finally, I think LXA should hire an outside group (maybe Arthur Anderson - they need the work) to audit their food collection to prevent "inadvertent over-counting" of results and especially to prevent members/pledges from eating the food. Some of the local LXAs seem to be getting a lttle plump.

My school actually didn't publish a list of what would be okay. If you wanted to you could count mowing your grandmother's yard. Your parents didn't count but I think that was it.

Anything that forces kids to get out of their comfort zones and into the community is fine with me.

I might have a problem if it were ONLY the abortion clinic on the list (not that I really have a stance on that one way or the other, it's just the principle of the thing) but you KNOW that's a red herring.

No matter how "liberal" as you call it the list is I'm sure you'll still have places like The United Way, Special Olympics, Nursing Homes, etc... 10 hours is NOT that much to ask in 4 years but it could probably teach a more valuable lesson than your Algebra class did.

Personally, I see nothing wrong it. A lot of the high schools in my area have the service requirement and the teens that talked to me about the requirement have no problem with completing it. It's usually volunteering with another organization.

lol. this reminds me of the time when my high school had all of the biology classes plant flowers and trim the bushes in front of the school. they said it was valid for bio classes but the real reason is because they didn't want to pay the custodial/yard workers any overtime. HAH HAH. it wasn't horrible but it was pretty shady.

as for the original point. i truly feel that public service is a necessity for our country. if a couple of schools want to require a few hours to graduate. DANG - stop whining and help and old lady cross a street. or even better, help some of the 1st graders learn to read. 10 hours is extremely easy to achieve and i think that EVERYBODY (not just teens) need to develop a little more respect through volunteering/public service.

as for the arguement against forcing it. hey - we're forced/expected to do things all the time that we don't wanna do. i most certainly didn't want to take a stupid proficiency test ever 3 years at my school. i didn't want to go to school at 7.30 in the morning, i didn't want to disect a frog, and i definetely resented being forced to do a stupid science fair project every year.

point is...it's just one more thing. kids will survive.

marissa

Re: IS it voluntary?
 

I had to do 75 hours of community service in high school (public.) I had to do 50 hours of community service in middle school (Catholic). It wasn't a big deal at all. My friends and I didn't gripe about being candy-stripers, it was fun and taught us some responsibility.

As for calling community service in Greek organizations hazing, that is ridiculous. Most organizations take pride in their philanthropies and our philanthropies are one aspect of Greek life that justifies our existence. Just because we are required to do community service every once in awhile does not mean we are being hazed...if that was the case, our initiations and chapter meetings would be hazing, too, simply because we are required to attend.

If you happen to miss a mandatory event, the worst thing that happens to you is you are fined. Then life goes on.

I read the original article, I read the points that were made, and I am obviously missing something.

Someone please clear this up for me?

The point of the article seems to be that these kids are being required to perform service in order to graduate. Something above and beyond the normal educational curriculuum.

So the article makes the point that if you are forcing it, its not public service anymore. True. There is no spirit of volunteerism.

We can all agree on that? Without choice you are not a volunteer?
I mean being forced to do something and then saying some of us liked it anyway has never been much of a defense has it?

And yes, if a GLO mandated it and someone claimed to be harmed by it, it would technically be hazing. But no one is likely to get excited about it until someone gets hurt.

I don't think that a reasonable person could possibly consider community service to be hazing. That's why I don't think there's much danger of litigation following from this requirment.

I don't think that the article ever said that anyone was MANDATING volunteerism. The original mandate never called it volunteerism, they called it community service -- that's what I get from careful reading of the posted article.

Courts prescribe community service as a way to make amends for your crimes regularly. Many student organizations require it, many public and private organizations require it as well.

"Forced labor" is a little harsh a name for 10 hours of community service over 4 years.

Lets just call a spade a spade ok? ITs forced labor. ITs non-voluntary public service. Or communiy service. In fact the article makes the same comparison that you alluded to, its similar to court mandated service.

Now I don't have a real problem with this type of forced labor, I don't think I would necesarily blink an eye at it. Although if my child didn't want to do it on ethical grounds i would defend that position.

In terms of student organizations: I have never been in a student organization that I was compelled to join that forced me to do service. These kids are in a public high school, they don't have a realistic option of changing schools in protest. Also, these are citizens with no enfranchisement. They don't vote and have no real voice. That is why the article makes the point of saying that you could never get away with this in an adult organization.

As far as a Greek organization: You can do almost anything as long as someone doesn't complain or get hurt. Let me assure you if someone gets hurt during a mandated event that looks forced, some plaintiff's attourney will work the whole hazing angle.

Just as a reminder, active members can also be hazed.

No way!!
 

I don't think this has anything to do with Greek organizations at all. When you join, you are usually made aware of the fact that the chapter does comm. service. Plus, you can quit any time you want.

If a private school wants to require you to go to chapel twice a day and do 100 hours of comm service a month, they can. They're a private entity.

But students at a PUBLIC high school should not be required to do community service, any more than they should be required to be in extracurricular activities or play sports. You can't make something that is non-academic part of an academic degree.

Plus, I agree that it completely degrades what community service really is. I sure as heck would not want my grandparents to be in a nursing home with adolescents who are being forced to be there doing "service."

How can you say that a public school has no right to choose its own curriculum?

If they want to include community service as part of their curriculum than why the hell not?

They MAKE you take Algebra and Geometry (completely worthless if you're a communications major like me) -- I had no choice there! It's just an attempt at broadening horizons, showing people the real world.

I think it's great.

James, I wouldn't consider this article to be any kind of expert opinion on the subject... As someone said earlier, it just sounds like the rantings of a HS student that's pissed that they have to get out from in front of their playstations and do something useful for a change.

First of all I completely disagree with the premise that a public high school cannot require you to do anything non academic. Schools are designed to produce productive members of society, not only to impart facts. Schools do not require enough of their students, nor do they give enough support. A well designed community service programs enhances students knowledge of the world and ability to work with others.
We have so many problems in todays society that it is ridiculous to absolve schools of any responsibility and prevent them from helping students in a non academic manner.

When thinking about whether this is right or wrong do not forget that these students also really do help people whether they like it or not. Last year my mother was sick and my family (my mom, sisters, and me) was moving but we couldn't afford movers. Two high school boys helped us move to fulfill part of their community service requirement. We honestly could not have done it without them. Sure had their high school not required public service these kids would not have volunteered but they really did make a difference and help us through a difficult time.
10 hours of community service won't hurt anyone and can actually matter to others.

If this is hazing....
 

If in some weird, misconstrued way doing community service and doing good for others could EVER be seen as hazing, then I will say:

"Thank you sir, may I have another!"

my continuing two-cents -

i also have to look at the private vs public school issue. i have always looked at a private school education as better than public (even though i got a perfectly fine public education). a lot of parents of school children (especially in ohio) are complaining that public schools aren't cutting it and want vouchers for private ones.

i think that mandating "public service" <---- not "forced volunteering, cause there is a difference> for hs grads is just one more way that some private schools are getting ahead of the public schools.

i completely agree with italianaxo -

/////Schools are designed to produce productive members of society, not only to impart facts. Schools do not require enough of their students, nor do they give enough support. A well designed community service programs enhances students knowledge of the world and ability to work with others. ////


too many kids come out of hs today without a sense of the world. i grew up in a great neighborhood - but through public service i was able to see first-hand the rest of the world.

and i definetely agree with some of the other posts. sounds like a whiny hs student who doesn't want to put down his PS2 long enough to rake some leaves at a park. WAH WAH. do it.

marissa

I don't agree - it's the PARENTS' job to produce productive members of society. Start telling schools that's their job, and your child's values and beliefs will be formed by their teachers, not their parents and family - do you really want to give the school that kind of power? Maybe if you're a lazy parent you do, but I personally do not.

Oh, and if the kids are sitting on their asses in front of Play Station, perhaps the PARENTS (are you seeing my theme here?) should detach them from the couch.

I don't have a problem with it in public or private schools if it is tied to a course - in that case it would be no different than an internship that you don't get paid for but get experience or some sort of credit. I'm probably a little older than many of you but I remember a time when just about everyone in high school did some sort of community service - I was the cutest candy striper on the ward!!! It really helped me get ready for the world of work and I felt good about helping people. But I don't think you just send folks somewhere and have them log in hours - there should be some sort of course or workshop that meets each marking period or maybe even each week to help them process the experiences.

Oh, how silly. How can anyone be against forcing people to do community service. Personally, I feel we would be much better off if everyone in this country was forced to do community service. Kind of like a military draft. We would all be better off for it. I think 10 hours for public graduation is a good start. But it is not near enough. I think you need at least 8320 hours before you can receive a high school diploma. Same for a college degree. So before you can have a college degree, you must accumulate 16, 640 hours. Think about how much better off we will be if this was a national requirement. (doubts anyone will get his real point)

Now, since this is greek life and not chit chat, I'll close with the thought that GLOs are voluntary organizations. No one has to join one. If you don't like your GLO's mandated service, then don't join.

My two cents,

Jack

We should all read and consider carefully what James wrote -- I think he has a pretty good grip on this situation.

Under the strictest interpretation -- the silly one we deal with daily -- anything you are "forced" to do can be considered hazing. So, "forced" community service could be labled as such.

Please notice he also said that he has no problem with students being required to perform such duties. Nor do I. Our son just graduated from high school and had 350 or so hours and got a cute little pin from the President's Council on something. He enjoyed what he did and helped the community.

I agree with his other point also. If a curriculum requires X hours of community service -- that's not volunteerism. But, it's still a good thing and benefits the community. There is a difference between the two. You can't be forced to volunteer -- the terms are mutually exclusive.

In terms of the Greek World, if anyone accepts a bid to an organization without knowing that philanthrophy (community service) is expected of them, either they aren't listening, or the chapter is doing a poor job during the recruiting process. That kind of thing should be spelled out upfront. If you don't want to do the service, don't accept the bid.

At my school certain Christian organizations (non-greek) I belong to require a certain amount of community service to get funding from the school. It's hard to think that the Christian Fellowship organization I belong to on campus would be "hazing" us by having us build houses for the homeless. Oy... :rolleyes:

So, public schools can force you to learn "teamwork" by making you play dodgeball and crab soccer in phys-ed, but when it comes to learning 'compassion' and 'helping others' by doing community service, people start throwing hissy fits! Something here is MAJORLY f***ed up!

PREACH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

..
 

I dont think high schools or colleges should require community service. If administrators think public service is so important then how come they dont make their own members participate for the same exact reasons that they want the students to participate?

When is the last time you saw a group of profs or high school administrators cleaning the side of a highway?

Re: ..
 

VERY true, but that doesn't mean students can't do it, although you make a very valid point.

Schools require PE ... not academic. They require sex ed to keep us from being teenage moms ... not academic. They require drivers ed ... great for the DMV, but not academic.

Schools are not there just to teach us academics. They are there to make us responsible, productive adult citizens. In my parents' day they had "citizenship" classes. I suppose the modern equivalent is the personal finance and social studies classes I took. And schools are being forced to take on parenting roles as many parents abdicate theirs. It may be mom and dad's job to teach little Suzi not to get pregnant at 14, but when we have moms who are locking their toddlers in the car to fry while they get their hair done, who can blame the school for trying to provide a little of what's missing at home?

"Requiring something" is NOT HAZING. In that case, life is hazing me by forcing me to breathe! Lemme sue! "Hazing" means requiring demeaning or harmful activity as a requirement of admission into or continued membership in an organization or institution. If a high school requires students to walk around naked except for a coating of whipped cream, that's hazing. Pulling weeds is a different story. Community service should be neither harmful nor demeaning. If it is, the school needs to re-evaluate what sort of community service it's requiring. Obviously, a good program would give students a choice of organizations to serve and different means to do it. And to avoid an appearance of conflict of interest, service to that school should be avoided.

I didn't read this whole thread, but I hear what Fuzzie's saying.

I will say one thing also--community service is increasingly becoming the thing that sets kids apart in college admissions...in Texas especially, since they passed the law requiring public universities to accept any applicant in the top 10% of their class--regardless of qualifications. My SIL's mom is involved in the admissions process at Texas A&M UNiversity & this law has made their admission process more cut-throat than ever (and this is true of UT and other state schools as well). This past year they had to really start looking at things above athletics & good grades b/c they are being overtaken with applications. It is no longer enough to go to a big name prep school & get great grades, if you aren't in the top 10% in TX, you better have some SERIOUS community service on your resume.

First off let me say that I am all for community service, and if a school is going to require it for graduation I say more power to them, but I think that the point that some are trying to make is that if my chapter or any GLO required our New Member class to do however many hours of community service before initiation, and someone had a problem with it we probably would get nailed for hazing.
Now I don't necessarily think that people would have a problem with the whole community service thing, it's just that hazing is anything that makes someone uncomfortable, it doesn't have to be something that harms them, but if someone feels uncomfortable doing community service, and we make them, isn't that hazing?

1. As far as calling required community service "hazing"... that's almost laughable. It fits just fine into Sigma Nu's hazing policy which I'm pretty sure is about the same with other NIC organizations.

As long as we don't make them do it at strange hours and it doesn't interfere with scholastics there isn't a problem.

2. If a public school wants to alter its curriculum then that is up to the individual school. Here in Oklahoma it's a decision made by the school board.

Fact: The school/school board sets the curriculum, NOT THE PARENTS, NOT THE STUDENTS...

I thought having to take 3 years of math going into a non mathmatical major in college was unfair also. The school didn't seem to care.

_______

I think the requirment is a great way to broaden kids horizons and applaud the administrators. I was required to do 100 hours of community service for graduation and I actually enjoyed it.