The Issue: Leaders propose fund to finance service trips What we think: Money would help emphasize formation
With almost 600 students returning from service trip placements that span the Western Hemisphere, it is hard to deny that Boston College has a culture of service. Issues of ethics, social justice, and solidarity are part of the common parlance on campus, and organizations like the Appalachia Volunteers and Arrupe International Program enjoy wide name recognition and large numbers of participants.
The success of these programs, as told through statistics, is staggering. According to a report from last year, 95 percent of students who participated in immersion trips found the experience to be important to their formation.
Well attuned to this type of feedback, administrators have seized on the successes of these programs to help differentiate BC from comparable universities. At BC, formation has become the thing - enough to make "point No. 2" of the Master Plan's seven points - and this emphasis is entirely warranted. In his message introducing the Master Plan, University President Rev. William P. Leahy, S.J. called for a plan that "builds on BC's nationally recognized strength" in formation. But are we doing enough to foster the service programs that are so central to that goal?
At BC, the spirit of support for service trips is overwhelming. Verbally, emphasis is placed on encouraging service activity from the moment students first enter Devlin Hall as prospective Eagles to their final walk down Linden Lane. Yet the financial support available to these trips has not kept pace with their growing importance or their burgeoning numbers of participants. In fact, many alumni donations to these programs merely decrease the school's share of funding rather than augment the funding levels overall.
While BC's service programs and their resources have grown immensely in the past decade, students are still often left begging at point-drive tables. By offering a way to more adequately finance service trips, BC's leaders could help open up the programs to all interested students and ensure their focus on the issues that count.
Undergraduate Government of BC president Jenniffer Castillo, A&S '08, and vice president Dan Sievers, A&S '08, and newly elected executives Chris Denice, CSOM '09, and Alejandro Montenegro, A&S '09, have proposed a Service Trip Endowment - an established fund to help finance trips. This type of program could be enormously beneficial.
First, the program could help provide equal access to these programs. By decreasing the amount individuals have to contribute to their travel expenses, this fund would allow students with tight budgets the ability to participate in these trips without breaking the bank. While individual aid is currently available on a case-by-case basis in programs like the Appalachia Volunteers, the cost of the trips are often a deterrent to interested students.
Second, the fund would allow students to better prepare for the experience. Without spending inordinate amounts of times working on raffles, point drives, and fundraising letters, students could focus on the issues of the communities they will be visiting and ways to bring the experiences on the trips back to BC.
This fund would not and should not cover all the cost of the trips. There still is something to be said for seeking community support for such endeavors. But an endowment could go a long way to defray costs that often make or break the feasibility of students affording a trip, especially with regard to the international trips.
The money for such a proposal need not come from the University's general fund. With a growing number of alumni having participated in and devoted to these programs, directed fundraising should be possible and even relatively simple. It would be a great way to get young alumni in the habit of giving to BC, while furthering the strategic initiatives underway at this school. Though directed giving is already possible, in most cases money "given to" a program is simply deducted from the amount allocated from the general funds. A service endowment, by contrast, would be budget-enhancing instead of budget-relieving, providing service organizations with additional resources to improve their programs.
As the school looks to present itself to the outside world as a university marked by its Jesuit values and active in fostering those ideals in its students, it should continue to talk up the exceptional service programs on campus. Now, however, it needs a way to put its money where its mouth is.
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