WHETHER or not you find it in the dictionary, service as performed through Alternative Spring Break is more than helpful aid or activity. If you glance through last year's demographic breakdown, the distribution of the applicant pool with relation to race and socio-economic status is notably absent. I can tell you from the pictures that most participants are white. ASB isn't inexpensive to boot. So, I ask, who goes on these trips? You may have suspected: white and well-off students. These demographics alone trigger my worst fear -- that ASB embodies no more than the perpetuation of an American delusion: a self-aggrandizing vision of the concerned, elite left, that our best option for eradicating poverty is helping those poor people whenever we can, if only for a week on our spring break. There is such a thing as misdirected and selfish service, and it with concern over this possibility that I write.
To quote William Coffin, "To show compassion for an individual without showing concern for the structures of society that made him an object of compassion is to be sentimental rather than loving." ASB is surely compassionate, but is it "loving"? Do domestic trips research the tax code? Do international trips think about NAFTA? How is it that few of these trips, if any, will endeavor to tackle the roots of the issues they wish to remedy? Could it be, to use Coffin's words, that ASB is structured to be entirely sentimental? Unconsidered compassion can quickly lead to an incorrect application and interpretation of a service experience. My qualms with ASB service lie with the experience it affords students, and this has everything to do with the educational component of the program.
When we see commercials on TV that implore us to save an orphan in Africa for twenty-nine cents a day, how do we incorporate those advertisements? With the emotions to which they are directed: pity, sentimentalism, and compulsion to charity. To draw a parallel, an uncontextualized week of Alternative Spring Break is tantamount to a week of watching such commercials. Without a critical framework, participants are forced to fall back upon the tools they have for encountering poverty: pity and sentimentality. A responsible Alternative Spring Break program will recognize and sidestep this tendency. Does our ASB do this?
Truly educating yourself about the global community requires a lot of work. In this vein, Alternative Spring Break is not a relaxed vacation. When you insert yourself into the lives of the impoverished under the auspices of global education and service, you had better understand exactly why you are helping them before the trip, and how to help them at its conclusion. One trip testimonial stated: "I originally applied for ASB practically on a whim and went to Port Isobel with no expectations at all." A scenario such as this one is irresponsible to all involved.
What about trip structure and its educational merits? Firstly, it must be recognized that real cultural exchange comes through extensive interaction with, and a developed compassion for, the people with whom you work. So we would expect that trips will necessarily focus their efforts on one problem and geographical location in order to achieve a nuanced understanding. Unfortunately this is not the case. A few ASB programs bounce from one place to the next, while many others spend as little as four days in actual service.
Some of the individual trip homepages make claims to effecting lasting change through a "week" of service. Do participants actually believe this? Between ASB promises and participant accolades, one of a few observations must hold true. Either University students are pleasantly oblivious to the fact that their service has no lasting effects in the areas they visit, or more bleakly, ASB participants really do believe that you can cure pneumonia with cough suppressant, to speak analogically. In the worst case, ASB has become a channel through which left-leaning College students morally justify their warm-weather or cosmopolitan excursions. Don't gasp. The size of this year's applicant pool forced the executive board to create a dozen extra trips. Around two-hundred students were not accepted for their primary choices. Yet as of January 26, the service trip here in Charlottesville still hadn't filled all its spots. Is an ASB trip that doesn't visit a city or approach the equator not worth doing?
Accountability: This is the largest problem for Alternative Spring Break. ASB is simply not in the spotlight the way Honor Committee is. Public scrutiny of ASB falls by the wayside in a few important ways. Firstly, people falsely assume that all service is good service. Secondly, the organization's ranks have just reached a size to warrant some serious criticism on the part of the University community. We have yet to see this kind of extra-organizational inquiry. There might be a real chance that I have misrepresented the University's ASB program in a few ways. But, I ask, is that a criticism of my research, or an illumination of the need for more organizational transparency?
The ideological stakes of a trip experience are huge. I would rather see sixty students report back with culturally specific accounts of their trips, then two hundred characterizations such as this one: "It [the trip] made me remember how lucky I am to have a home and a family, to be safe and happy, and to go to such an amazing school as [the University.]" Another trip testimonial stated: "In Monte Cristi, I planned lessons, taught ABC's, and chased orphans around blissfully." That is very nice and all, but why were you there teaching ABC's? Were the reasons for that trip blissful? ASB has an obligation, as a University organization that makes claims to education, to pursue the truth. Otherwise, what good is the collective revelation of an army of participants that only bolsters sentimentalism?
I do not mean to side with those at the other methodological extreme of fighting poverty; those who scoff at service touting institutional reform as the only solution. They are extreme. That said, participants: this trip is not just something to do over the break. Rise to the occasion and see this week for what it is: much more than a single week. With reform and gravity, the University can have every opportunity to be an exemplar to other ASB programs, and exercise the moral certitude that it now only realizes in gesture.
William DeVar is a fourth-year student in the College of Arts and Sciences.
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