ALTERNATIVE Spring Break is a manifestation of white man's guilt. Privileged University students make it their duty to pick up for a week to find themselves in adverse circumstances and come back to their palatial surroundings feeling like more moral beings. Through their experiences in foreign lands students purport to engage in meaningful cultural exchange and make significant improvements in local communities, but fall short of this goal because of a shortage of money and time and their focus on egocentric, feel-good team-building efforts.
Participating in ASB is much worthier than spending all your money to sit on a beach and get drunk for a week. Yet, while some worth can be drawn from examining alternatives, a program cannot survive for long if it intends to define its value by what it is not.
ASB claims that their mission is twofold.They seek to foster leadership in their student volunteers and to have a positive impact at their various destinations. How could anyone disagree with that? When examined critically, however, some glaring ironies surface.
It is no great revelation that University students are called to give back; therefore on the surface ASB looks like a worthy endeavor in pursuit of meaningful charity. But students end up raising money for travel that could have otherwise been put to better use at their destinations. Trips to overseas destinations are especially troubling because of expensive airfare. A group of a dozen students might take a trip Belize, for example. At the cheapest, it costs $400 per ticket from Washington; these hypothetical Belize volunteers could have donated nearly $5,000 to the community in airfare alone. What's more, the labor that students do could be hired out and paid to poor indigenous people.
Responding to this criticism, Kenny Ott President of the University chapter of ASB, said, "Our flight costs are part of a greater investment. The hope is that our volunteers come back with a new perspective on issues around the globe and make a decision to refocus their work at the University to address the problems they identify." First and foremost, ASB should locate its goals in their destinations, not in the ways they can teach perpetually spoiled American students to uplift places and peoples they deem underprivileged. The program obviously does not intend to reinforce destructive stereotypes, but ends up doing so all the same.
By rallying around a feel good cause, privileged college students waste money on travel expenses that could otherwise go to the very people that ASB intends to uplift.
Additionally, in one week it is hard to make an impact anywhere, let alone in an unfamiliar place. This is a shortcoming of most short term missions work and service projects. As a result, service groups rely on team building and an uplifting ethos to make up for what they lack in substance.
Even if the participants don't spend thousands of dollars to fly half way around the world, there's still something quite unsatisfying about the ethos of ASB. Camped in the language of moral duty, ASB deludes students into believing that their time is best spent endeavoring to find themselves in the hardship of others. Far from humbling, this egocentric attitude must be quite patronizing to the peoples who live the realities of hardship.
Moreover, while listening to two young women promote ASB earlier this year they claimed that "they were an ASB success story."They went on a trip together the previous year and became best friends. ASB trips are enjoyable, "life changing," and a place to foster friendship.I am certain many students have a wonderful time, witnessed by the increased participation over the past several years. According to Ott, "Three years ago ASB had four trips with 50 participants. This year we have 34 trips with over 500 participants." But this cannot be the marketing tool or the point of a group that is dedicated to meaningful service. The fact that it is "cool" to go on an ASB trip compromises the humility it takes to truly and sincerely serve people.
The success of a service organization should not be measured by the friendships the trips foster or the fun the volunteers have, but primarily by the impact they have in the communities they visit. Because charity is not about feel-good personal returns, students genuinely hoping to help out should eye Alternative Spring Break with more caution.
Christa Byker's column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at cbyker@cavalierdaily.com.
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