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Helping Out: Calling All Volunteers

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Because ASU students are no longer required to fulfill community service hours, charities like Habitat for Humanity are struggling to find volunteers.

Normally at this point in the semester, Louisa Ballard could expect students to come to her for help.

For the past 10 years, students sought out Ballard to volunteer their time after procrastinating on fulfilling their required community service hours. Ballard, who is the volunteer program coordinator for ASU Grounds Services, would give them work, usually in the arboretum where students would help care for the plants on campus. This year is different.

Ballard says the number of student volunteers has drastically dropped since last semester, when the Arizona Board of Regents decided out-of-state student scholarship recipients no longer had to complete community service hours.

"It happened overnight," says Ballard. "I used to have no problem getting volunteers."

The ABOR decision was announced at a meetig last August. According to the ABOR meeting agenda, the elimination of the policy would make Arizona's universities more competitive in the recruitment of high quality non-resident students. In addition, the agenda states that the volunteer program was difficult to monitor.

"No funds were provided for this, and the universities felt there were better uses of the money," says Stephanie Jacobson, the ABOR associate executive director for academic and student affairs. "I also think there are greater expectations by university leadership for all students to be involved in an internship or other experience in the community," she says.

Elizabeth Arnold, a National Merit Scholar and industrial design junior, is one of about 1,500 students affected by the change. She says she's happy about it.

Arnold says students in her major face rigorous challenges throughout the semester. Completing community service was always "a nightmare."

"I don't have time to sleep or think," she says. "We're always at school, we almost live there and sleep there, sometimes on an air mattress for three hours in our studio to finish up projects."

In the past, Arnold would complete her volunteer hours at the ASU child development lab or the arboretum. Now, she doesn't volunteer at all and she says it is a huge relief.

"I think that having students doing community service is valuable, but I don't think that students were doing it for the right reasons," she says.

It's this attitude that Ballard says is causing her struggle to recruit volunteers.

"Community service is good; it taught students about giving more of themselves to the community and making that a part of their lives," says Ballard. "Students also learned about ASU and they had more ownership into campus because they knew the campus intimately. They learned to see it in a different way."

The ASU chapter of Habitat for Humanity has also seen a significant decrease in volunteers, says Habitat president Pax Whitmore.

Whitmore says that he joined Habitat three years ago with a friend who had to meet his community service requirements for a scholarship. Back then, there were about 50 regular members. This year, they have about 20.

Habitat for Humanity needs volunteers on Saturday mornings to help build homes, he says. Typically, students would only have to volunteer for two or three days to meet their required hours since the builds take so long.

"It's not really taxing work, but it makes a difference for us to depend on those people for those two or three events," he says.

Whitmore says that when the decision was passed, there was a general air of disapproval from the service groups around campus. "Everyone was kind of upset because it cuts back the motivation for students," he says.

Yung Cossar, the build coordinator for the ASU chapter and team leader for the Phoenix chapter of Habitat, says she tries to recruit 25 volunteers for the build each week, but she hasn't been able to bring more than eight volunteers to a build this year.

Cossar is a civil engineering major who joined Habitat because of her scholarship requirement.

"I think it is a wonderful necessity," she says. "If I can find time to volunteer every weekend, then I don't think it should be any trouble at all for most students to get 20 service hours a semester for a scholarship requirement."

Reach the reporter at mani.obrien@asu.edu.

Places to volunteer around campus:


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