IF YOU'VE been paying attention around Grounds you will have noticed signs and chalkings advertising Alternative Spring Break's upcoming fall and winter trips. And if you've been paying really close attention, you will have noticed a line at the bottom of the signs; "Applications due October 1st." That's because here at the University we're so altruistic that if you want to spend your Spring Break on a service project, not only do you have to pay, you actually have to apply.
"Quite simply we don't have enough spots," ASB Vice President P.J. Podesta said. "We're growing and growing, and ASB has exploded in the past couple of years, which is incredibly exciting, but we simply don't have enough spots to give to everybody."
Of course, University students are not strangers to competition. Just getting in here was competitive. Applying to certain majors or to a distinguished major program is competitive. Getting to be a Resident Advisor is competitive; getting into the Jefferson Society is competitive; getting to be a University Guide is competitive; the Lawn is competitive -- the list goes on. And this trend is not going to end. Even after school our entire lives will be defined by resumés and applications and a series of competitive fights to rise higher in the world.
Of all these things, the one thing students should not have to compete for is the opportunity to serve and gain a different perspective of our world. By requiring candidates to apply, ASB makes it seem as though certain people are more qualified for volunteer work and more deserving of the chance to go on a service trip. The chance to volunteer should not be meted out to students who have had the most previous experience, written the best essay or chosen the five best words to describe themselves. The only requirement for going on a service project should be the desire to serve.
"It's not a question of a particular type of person," Podesta said of what ASB is looking for. "Our philosophy more and more is becoming that any person at all that wants to apply is the ideal ASB participant."
If this is true, ASB should simply switch to a lottery system. A lottery system would ensure that competition for spots was truly fair. If ASB conducted a lottery, then candidates who want to volunteer would not be passed over just because they were poor essay writers or don't conduct an interview well.
Podesta stated that ideally ASB would like to be able to accommodate everyone that applies, and ASB certainly deserves credit for trying to achieve this goal. In 2005 ASB attracted 137 applicants. In 2006 that number had risen to 275 applicants, and 37 had to be wait-listed. Last year, 880 people applied. To deal with the overload, ASB actually added trips, and as a result 550 people were accepted. This year ASB anticipates accepting up to 900 students, which is phenomenal. ASB has also changed the application so that instead of ranking trips, students merely check off which trips they are willing to go on, which should help open as many trips as possible to as many students as possible.
It still remains true, however, that if ASB genuinely cares about giving every applicant possible the opportunity to go on a trip, it should remove any semblance of criteria to go on trips by removing the application. Many of the national parent volunteer organizations ASB uses to conduct trips -- such as the Remember organization in South Dakota, and Orphanage Outreach in the Dominican Republic -- already accept whoever is willing to sign up with them, ASB should follow their example -- if not in numbers, than at least in requirements. The application process, and with it the idea that volunteering is a privilege, should be abolished from ASB A.S.A.P.
Margaret Sessa-Hawkins is a Cavalier Daily Viewpoint Writer. She is a fourth-year student majoring in Spanish and English.
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