As graduating seniors, we have been repeatedly told the University’s unofficial motto over four years: “In the Nation’s Service and in the Service of All Nations.” Before we walk through the FitzRandolph Gate, we wanted to reflect on why service is such a valuable part of a University education. This column aims to highlight the importance of civic engagement in the lives of participating students.
While the point of service and civic engagement is to serve others, there are invaluable benefits for participants themselves. We seek to disrupt the notion that service is about the privileged helping the poor, a one-way flow of resources from the University to the community. Instead, we argue that the most meaningful service is built on honest, compassionate relationships with those around us. These relationships, above all else, have sustained us and driven us in our individual attempts to positively affect our communities.
Service and civic engagement can begin in one’s own backyard through showing compassion to those in our own circles. Damaris Miller ’15 noted, “In the drive to ‘go do service’ we can forget that there are people living with us on campus who are in need and often marginalized in some way.” Miller credits her Bridge Year experience with this perspective, reflecting that during her year in India, she began to feel that “the richest service I could do began with friendship and have striven to maintain that notion throughout Princeton, whether by serving communities off campus or seeking to aid those directly around me.” Zhan Okuda-Lim ’15 similarly looked inwardly to find his niche. Okuda-Lim has spearheaded mental health policy reform on campus as a result of his own experiences with mental health issues. Upon hearing that other students also had similar difficulties navigating health resources on campus, he worked with students and administrators to reduce the stigma surrounding mental health on campus and to expand access to campus resources.
For others, service or civic engagement outside of one’s community is pivotal because it provides individuals with a more accurate sense of reality. For Logan Coleman ’15, serving as an active participant of DREAM Team, an immigration reform group with the Pace Center for Civic Engagement, has kept her grounded. Coleman says, “The perspectives that we gain access to through opening up our doors to the community have been pivotal in expanding and clarifying our vision of reality that can otherwise become overly isolated within Princeton’s gates.” Coleman highlights a powerful experience in which DREAM team helped stop the deportation of a New Jersey father. Logan says, “Seeing him reunite with his family in time for Thanksgiving will continue to live in my memory as one of the happiest moments of my life and would have never been possible without the two-way street of engagement.”
Service and civic engagement also provide depth to one’s life by supplementing volunteers’ understanding of issues with real, lived experiences of those who are directly affected by them. Claire Nuchtern ’15 sees the inextricable link between service and her University education. By taking classes in African American Studies and sociology, Nuchtern was able to gain a critical lens through which to view her volunteer activities at a local prison. Noting one of her reasons for continued involvement in service, Nuchtern says, “I fear I would have forgotten the stories and hopes and dreams behind the horrifying statistics.”
For students with intense academic or extracurricular commitments, it can be a challenge to fit service into their schedule. However, for varsity athlete Joanna Anyanwu ’15, experiences with diverse communities through civic engagement informed her interactions with her teammates and friends. Anyanwu says, “It was paramount that I integrate community service into my Princeton experience despite the constraints posed by my athletic commitments.” To this end, Anyanwu became an active leader in Community Action, which allowed her the opportunity to apply the skills she had learned on the track to expanding and enhancing the program. Anyanwu’s experience highlights how service has the ability to enhance all aspects of a student’s Princeton experience, rather than being a simple activity on the side.
Our collective experiences highlight the depth to which community engagement experiences have affected us. The University is a place of tremendous resources and incredibly passionate people who are here to learn and grow. We found that through engaging meaningfully with our own community here, and with communities outside Princeton, we have been challenged to make service not a box to check, but an integral part of our world view. We hope to draw upon our varied experiences to reexamine what it means to serve at the University. We hope to redefine how this campus views this most crucial work and to challenge our community to reimagine service and civic engagement as not just an extracurricular activity, but as a broader system of ethics and way of engaging with the world that is at the heart of what it means to be a student at the University.
Joanna Anyanwu ’15, Community Action Executive Board
Katie Bauman ’15, Student Volunteers Council Executive Board
Caleb Bradford ’15, Community House Executive Board
Ray Chao ’15, Former Breakout Coordinator Board, Ban the Box New Jersey Executive Director
Logan Coleman ’15, Former Co-Director of the Princeton DREAM Team
Cara de Freitas Bart ’15, Pace Council for Civic Values
Laura Harder ’15, Student Volunteer Council Board Chair, Outdoor Action Leader
Shawon Jackson ’15, Former Breakout Coordinator Board, Former USG President
Sarah Jeong ’15, Breakout Princeton Student Executive Board
Janie Lee ’15, Pace Council for Civic Values, Former Students for Education Reform President
Nihar Madhavan ’15, Breakout Princeton Student Executive Board, Community Action Leader
Amantia Muhedini ’15, Breakout Princeton Student Executive Board, Poverty and Peacemaking Conference Organizer
Claire Nuchtern ’15, Pace Council for Civic Values, Student Volunteers Council Project Leader, Former U-Councilor
Zhan Okuda-Lim ’15, Pace Council for Civic Values, U-Councilor
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