Marquette sells itself as a university committed to Jesuit ideals through service, a pitch that attracts a substantial portion of its student base. Students come to campus expecting what Marquette sells: an accessible service program eager to support local, national and international service. When students arrive here, they find scattered student service organizations working without a sufficient unifying link.
Although the administration is responsible for providing this link, they consistently fail to recognize the progress of service departments at competing universities and lack the foresight to develop a sufficient central service hub to unify service under one, focused umbrella system. Although Marquette prides itself on community service, the service program is years behind its competitors, and the administration isn't doing enough about it.
Most service universities have already created a center to manage and unify service. For example, Boston College has a volunteer and service learning center, or VSLC, funded and directed by the university. This center is a network for existing student service organizations to increase the development, unification and sustainability of service programs on campus. The VSLC is accessibly located on the first floor of McElroy Commons, a heavily trafficked building on campus. It hosts dining facilities, a post office, a bookstore and rooms for student organizations and cultural activities. This location provides constant exposure for the center and easy accessibility for the community.
Marquette has a center for community service, but it wasn't even given its own office. The center is stuffed into the reject office of student development on the third floor of the Alumni Memorial Union. Since most traffic through the AMU is on the first and second floors, the center gets minimal exposure and is extremely difficult to stumble upon.
While the Marquette center focuses on one-day service opportunities, the VSLC provides a one-stop shop for service on campus. They not only provide service information in their office, but have created an extremely interactive service Web site. On the Web page, community members can find information on postgraduate volunteering and campus organizations engaged in service. Plus, they can search a volunteer database to organize service opportunities by interest and availability. It has information on yearlong placements, one-time opportunities, as well as a place for student organizations to post service opportunities and spread awareness about their individual initiatives.
If the administration is so concerned with developing Marquette based on Jesuit ideals, how does a center like the VSLC not already exist? How does the administration allow us to slip behind competing universities in the area we pride ourselves on most?
In order to shatter their complacency I challenge the community to engage in dialogue and rush into action. I encourage students and faculty to stand up in support of a new service center where the community can easily access service, feel unified under one system and have confidence that the programs they work so hard to create will sustain and develop into the future.
Kapke is a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences.
,”J.T. Kapke”
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