Students' sense of charity needs work
Julie Williams
Issue date: 2/4/10 Section: Opinion
|
Since 1976, Habitat for Humanity International has built over 350,000 houses for people who need them most with help from hundreds of thousands of dedicated volunteers. Much less impressive is the dedication to Habitat from the students in the Geneseo community.
At the beginning of this semester, the few extremely committed individuals who held the Geneseo chapter of Habitat for Humanity together decided that without increased participation by the student body, it would not be possible to continue to exist as an official organization.
The Livingston County chapter of Habitat depends on volunteers from this campus to go on work trips every Saturday to help both at the build site in Mount Morris and the Habitat for Humanity ReStore. It's actually really fun, kind of like playing Bob the Builder for a day. If no one shows up for the work trips, however, both work sites are short-staffed and the Geneseo student body fails in its commitment to the other volunteers, to the families that need a home and to the overall mission of Habitat for Humanity.
This is embarrassing. Looking at it from a purely physical perspective, there are over 5,000 able-bodied students at Geneseo. Anyone who has been to the gym at 4 in the afternoon knows that we have more than enough energy and physical strength to share with the community. If we harnessed even a small fraction of that vitality and used it for a few hours on a Saturday morning, we could build a house in no time.
What does this say about our character? Work trips begin at 8:45 a.m. Yes, we all acknowledge that that is really, really, painfully early. But the beautiful thing about Habitat at Geneseo is that you do not have to be present for every single work trip; you can go once a semester or every week as long as you sign up and actually show up for duty on Saturday morning.
Be the first to comment on this story