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E-PrinceOn Oct. 10, the Korean American Students Association screened a documentary on homeless North Korean orphans, which powerfully portrayed various unimaginable horrors caused by poverty. The event was catered by Olive's with enough food for at least 60 people ...(back to the article)
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I agree with the idea that simply raising awareness on campus is not enough. There needs to be channeling into the actual service organizations that students can get involved with on campus. My criticism of this piece is that it did not do the necessary research into HOW students can get involved. For an article that is meant to provoke people into action (not merely raise awareness), it does precious little to channel students into the actual service organizations on campus. And yes, that repetition was purposefully made.
For those reading this article online, I urge you to go to the Student Volunteers Council webpage (www.princeton.edu/~svc), where we have 40+ different weekly projects that are making an impact every day. What's more, it is an entirely student-driven organization. You'll also notice that we worked with SGAC just this past weekend to put on Lose the Shoes, an event which raises money for Grassroots Soccer, an organization that "Uses the power of soccer in the fight against AIDS" (http://www.grassrootsoccer.org/). Community House (http://www.princeton.edu/house/) is also focused on direct service, but with a focus on lowering the educational achievement gap of minority students in the Princeton area.
Finally, as organizational leaders put their next advocacy events on paper, please do the research to provide service opportunities for the attendants. Just a simple flyer that participants can pick up with a list of resources (on-campus projects, non-profits, internships, etc.) will be incredibly helpful.
This article raises a very important point - our society was trained to value effort and intentions. In elementary school, we received grades for 'effort' that were equally important as our graded performance. There are times when intentions are incredibly valuable and honorable, but I find that sometimes when you mess up, the thoughts don't count.
Prince writers need to learn some journalistic integrity. Though the intentions here are superficially good, in fact Eric Kang wrote not out of ignorance but out of a desire to wilfully misrepresent the effort and passions of these student groups.
A severe claim? Not so much. When Eric Kang inquired by email about SGAC's Orphan T-shirt campaign, we were puzzled as to why he would consider a visual representation of AIDS statistics as social activism/advocacy rather than education. This was an education project, not an advocacy project. And so, we made absolutely sure to stress this in our reply to him:
"We'd also like to very strongly stress that if you're writing about 'social activism', our organization is also well-known for holding call-ins. One of our major campaigns last year was getting people to call their senators about 1) reauthorizing PEPFAR (the largest funding bill related to AIDS in the history of the United States) for the next 5 years and 2) what we considered to be major flaws in the bill. I would estimate that over the course of the year we had 200 students participate in one of our 'call-in days'. One the more active end of the spectrum, our group has also participated in two major protests. Please ask if you have questions about this." We received a reply from Eric asking for more information about the T-shirt campaign, with no questions about our actual advocacy events.
Funny how none of that made it in. This is particularly irritating because our group has worked hard to effect as much change as a college student group could expect to. Besides what was included in the reply email to Eric, students in our group have taken the time to meet with senators, have been invited to speak to other campuses about organizing advocacy events and gotten in trouble in the past for the more extreme end of our advocacy activities. I should also mention that this article conspiscuously omits the efforts of other groups with an advocacy slant that have done impactful work, regardless of whether or not the Prince reports on them: Speakout, PAWS, and ONE spring easily to mind.
Now it is absolutely true that many students on this campus are apathetic, and overwhelmingly true that student organizations want to hear feedback about how we can improve. But an article that truly intended to invoke change rather than insult would have considered the facts before professing to reason about or judge them.
This article is the product of a writer who wanted a topic that was easy to write about and a desire to make that point DESPITE the facts. There was a lot of potential here for a good article by an articulate writer, but instead the Prince is merely affirming its growing reputation of biased reporting and poor journalistic research.