The contradictions of service

The ALS "Ice Bucket Challenge," one of the biggest social media trends to sweep across the nation this summer, was also a source of controversy. The "Ice Bucket Challenge" asked participants to film themselves dumping buckets of ice over themselves and post the videos on Facebook in order to encourage awareness of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, and then nominate friends to do the same.

One of the objections people had to this trend was that it was primarily selfish —sometimes people didn’t donate money, and even if they did, it wasn’t because of interest in ALS, it was because the ice bucket video garnered social media attention for the participant. People also argued that the challenge spread through peer pressure —people who were nominated were pressured to complete the challenge by either creating another video or donating. Moreover,The New Yorker argued that people could have donated instead to a more worthwhile cause, such as malaria, since participants didn’t have any particular attachment to the ALS cause or knowledge about its impact. Because there was an aspect of selfishness about the ALS challenge, people questioned the ethics of the campaign.

Looking at charity from this perspective challenges the validity of a lot of other forms of giving or service. One example is ‘voluntourism,’ the act of traveling to another country to volunteer. Many Princeton programs exist that provide housing and funding to participate in international service trips and internships. However, these trips are arguably intended to mainly benefit the student, not the volunteer organization. Students benefit by having experience to put on a resume, learning a new language, gaining a new perspective or just plain having fun. It would be more efficient to use the money spent on buying plane tickets and funding housing to simply pay locals to do the service work. This would have the twofold advantage of boosting the local employment rates while also doing work that benefits the community. Although Princeton students are educated and talented in many ways, they’re not necessarily trained in the volunteer work some regions require, such as building construction or teaching. Like the ALS Challenge, the primary motivation for volunteering abroad is, most likely, not for the volunteering aspect, which introduces inefficiencies. The money will flow to the focus of the program, and the focus in most ‘voluntourism’ cases is not the charity.

Other examples of focus on the volunteer rather than the beneficiaries would be any charity event at all, whether it’s a charity ball or a 5K run. The money used to organize the event could easily go directly to the cause. Instead, money is used to promote the event and pay coordinators. However, without the selfish components to each form of charity, it is highly likely that people would not donate at all. That particular issue raises the question —is it better to selfishly volunteer than not to volunteer at all?

The same arguments against the ALS challenge also hold with ‘voluntourism’ and expensive charity events —namely that people won’t care about the particular cause because it isn’t the primary reason for their participation. Yet, these events and volunteer trips, like the "Ice Bucket Challenge," still produce results regardless of how dubious the initial intentions. From July 29to Aug. 28, the ALS Association raised $98.2 million, compared to $2.7 million in the same period last year. The volunteer trips and volunteer events still raise money and awareness, even if the method is somewhat ineffective.

Perhaps making service a completely unselfish act is unreasonable because people need some benefit to themselves in exchange for the sacrifice in time, effort and money. But there may be ways of reducing the selfish aspect of giving. Starting at Princeton, we can offer more summer volunteer opportunities that emphasize service over travel and benefits to the student, perhaps by offering internships locally. We can promote 5K runs and charity events with more focus on the cause so that students are more aware of what they’re giving to. Maybe by starting with our campus, by offering more information to students and promoting the cause over the benefits to the volunteer, students can start to move away from the selfishness of service.

Barbara Zhan is an operations research and financial engineering major from Plainsboro, N.J. She can be reached at barbaraz@princeton.edu.