This Spring Break, 12 other Princeton students and I flew to New Orleans with the desire to make a difference in Melia, one of the city's neighborhoods. This trip was sponsored by the Student Volunteers Council (SVC). We each paid ...(back to the article)
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I completely agree with your article, and thank you for writing it because I think it's really important for more students to go on these types of trips. However, I just wanted to point out that there were twice the number of applications for the Breakout Trips than spots avaliable, so perhaps part of the solution is simply creating more trips or allowing more people to go on them. To Anonymous - the University actively promotes the fact that they will fund us in our endeavors, and while I agree that some money allocations are rather dubious (ice sculpture at a Whitman dinner), and what better activity to promote than giving back to the society? What would you want the endowment to go towards? If you don't like the way the University is spending your money don't give it!
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Ben Chen, I completely agree with you. In order to truly fulfill the university's message of "Princeton in the nation's service and in the service of all nations,"the University should do more to support these kind of break trips. Schools like UVA and Duke have already set a great example: UVA sends out over one hundred alternative spring break trips across the country and abroad. And to anonymous, I am paying full tuition here and taking on personal student debt to be here. I choose to participate in these kind of trips because I consider them to be a worthwhile use of my time. I pay for them myself and it would be helpful for the University to reduce my cost from over 200 dollars. It is possible to create a culture of student service here. Expanding break trips and increasing institutional support at the University level are a great way to start.
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Is there any activity students that can think up during their morning or evening showers that they don't feel the university has an obligation to fund? Ask your parents for a change, instead of alumni who fund the endowment. we pay for our kids to go to Princeton, too, so no need to hear about how your parents are already paying large tuition bills; in fact, for many, they are paying nothing at all.
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