After consulting with experts on community service, university administrators have decided not to require students to do community service this semester in response to Hurricane Katrina.
Rev. Kevin Wildes, S.J., university president, said Loyola will continue to encourage and deepen its existing culture of community service.
The decision has raised some eyebrows on campus this week because Tulane University is requiring its incoming freshman class to do community service in order to graduate.
“We’ve had a long tradition of community service. This is not new to us,” Wildes said. “I want us to do what we’ve been doing but better.”
Michael Girardot, music business sophomore, supported the university’s choice to keep service voluntary. Although he played at a benefit concert and was among those turned away from Habitat for Humanity on Saturday, Girardot argued freedom of choice was an integral part of the college experience.
Stephen MacDonald, music business sophomore, supported the idea of mandatory service but acknowledged that most returning students planned to do some work to help rebuild the city.
“There’s no pride in coming back to a destroyed city and not doing anything about it,” MacDonald said.
He wasn’t alone in the sentiment; last weekend when Loyola’s student body mobilized on a large scale for the first time since Hurricane Katrina for community service in New Orleans.
The first gathering was on Friday for Loyola University Community Action Program’s Party With A Purpose, an informational gathering in the Peace Quad. On Saturday, LUCAP organized a number of volunteer programs for Loyola Cares Day.
“Party with a Purpose was a success,” said history junior Mandi Moore, external affairs chair of LUCAP. “Some kids were there for the pizza and beer, which is inevitable, but a lot of kids were really interested,” Moore said.
For Loyola Cares Day, LUCAP adviser Sister Leyla Cerda said that she had to turn away more than twenty people who showed up on Saturday to take part in the day’s activities, which included Habitat for Humanity, gardening at the Arc of Greater New Orleans, an organization on mental retardation, and tutoring community schoolchildren with the CARE Project. Because of the massive interest from the student body, all the spaces had already been filled.
“Ever since my freshman year I wanted to get into things like [Habitat] but, being a music major, you really don’t have as much time as you wish you did,” said BethHalel, general music junior, who attended the second session of Habitat for Humanity on Saturday. “This year I’m making space for it.”
Carol Jeandron, Loyola’s director of Service Learning, said she wouldn’t mind seeing Loyola mandate service but understands the university’s reluctance to do so. She added that Loyola’s students are already active.
“My guess is that [by the time they are seniors] there are very few students here who have not done some kind of community service,” Jeandron said.
She explained that in addition to volunteer work, both students and faculty express an increased interest in service learning, which connects community service to academic classes.
She said her unique challenge since the storm has been to reconnect with the community agencies which have themselves been affected by Katrina.
Wildes said that the school’s plan was to encourage students to volunteer and faculty to look for the opportunities for service that fit into their courses. Virtually every aspect of New Orleans life has been affected, said Wildes, and opportunities for students to have positive effects on their community abound.
“There’s a hell of a lot of work to be done,” Wildes said.
Kevin Corcoran can be reached at [email protected].
