Column: Duke students need not apply

I still remember a mandatory meeting I attended last semester for all service-learning students. A representative from the Kenan Institute for Ethics explained that since Duke students were so arrogant and self-righteous, many community organizations were finding that they were better off without us. I couldn't believe her honesty. Unfortunately, Duke evidently thought that this was a problem to be tackled in 45 minutes.

I have been aware of our issues with community service for some time. But then again, I had a rather unusual upbringing. (Our organic flower farm in the Kansas countryside grew community just as easily as it grew beautiful flowers and fragrant herbs.) People came from all over to marvel at my mother's gorgeous flower arrangements and walk through the lushness of our farm. I think they also came to recapture some sense of community and nature.

It is only now that I am starving for community that I realize just what community really is. I grew up in a world in which the term "community service" didn't exist. My mother didn't call it community service when she gave away flower arrangements, nor did the old women who bought my "arrangements" think of it as charity. I long for this kind of community now.

Even with the obvious issues I face as a Duke student doing community service, I ended up loving my service-learning assignment: tutoring ESL students at E.K. Powe Elementary School. The students with whom I work help keep me in touch with who I am. Their joy reminds me of the laughs of my sister's five little girls, and their desire to learn motivates me to make the most of Duke. The story of a father waking before dawn to get in line for work at a factory, despite his sickness, enrages me. Their need for an equal chance at life reminds me of my own privilege to be here at Duke. A blink of an eye and I am yet another "paper or plastic?" worker.

Perhaps our primary problem with community interaction at Duke is our idea of community service itself. We read descriptions of poor families and raise money for Project SHARE, but we never wonder why some people who work so brutally hard can't afford Christmas presents for their children. We go to tutor, but we don't talk much about why our schools are so strapped for cash. We volunteer with Habitat for Humanity, but we don't ask why affordable housing is such a pipe dream for many families. And we do all this clearly labeled as a giver of service to the thankful receiver. Oh, and we still like to drive new SUVs and wear designer clothes to our work sites.

Of course, community service work can do a lot of good. But we have the wrong idea. When we "give back" in some way to the community, shouldn't we also acknowledge what we take away? That single woman who works two jobs but just can't make ends meet? Maybe she works in the back of your favorite restaurant. Her cheap labor keeps your food inexpensive. The charities with which you volunteer that try to make up for dwindling social service programs? Maybe they are struggling because taxes were cut for your parents.

When we volunteer in the community, it must be in recognition of the unequal distribution of resources in this country. Where is it written that we deserve so much when others are barely able to survive? Our own University is a bastion of privilege amidst some of the most poverty stricken areas in the nation. When we "give back" to our community, it needs to be in recognition that we will never give enough.

But we have to try. And to quote one of my favorite Ani DiFranco songs (and the namesake of my column), it isn't enough to just patch up the holes. We have to dare to ask from where the rips came in the first place. My mother didn't call it community service when we brought dinners to the old man who had built our table many years before. It was simply just to bring food to the man who built the table on which we were eating. I wish Duke students could know who builds our tables.