Rice's secretive service: Volunteering at Rice must not be hidden

By Cathy Hu     1/30/13 6:00pm

Rice University's best-kept secret? (It starts with an S and isn't Sid Highlighter).

Service. Yes, it exists.

However, at a university where many students have accomplished the superhuman feat of taking upward of 18 hours of classes, working on- or off-campus jobs, being involved in multiple clubs and organizations, researching in labs since freshman year and interning for national corporations every summer, our focus as Rice students seems to be clear: ourselves.

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The idea of volunteering in the greater community has unfortunately become a distant, if not foreign, concept to much of the student population. What once was likely a prevalent part of many of our lives throughout high school has slowly been pushed to the back of our minds. Many students occasionally wander into that area of the mind and wish to get involved with a service organization, but how many actually do?

There are two possible reasons for this lack of student participation in service-related activities: 1) the student, or 2) the system.

I strongly doubt it is the former.

With many students who wish to participate in community service but ultimately are unable to easily find the means to do so, it is evident that the problem is not with the lack of student interest or intent but rather the efficiency and effectiveness of the volunteering system at Rice to connect students with service opportunities.

Two main obstacles that stand between students and volunteer opportunities are organization and publicity.

One of the major issues the service system at Rice faces is not the lack of volunteer opportunities, but rather the contrary: the overwhelming amount of opportunities and the lack of organization between the different campus and community groups in presenting them to students.

Rice runs several websites (the service organization pages of the Office of Student Activities and Community Involvement Center websites) with lists of volunteer opportunities and organizations, but some groups are inactive or have outdated information, and others are not even included on the list. Like many of the Rice websites we all know and love, these service sites are far from user friendly.

Rice Service Council is the umbrella service organization on campus, created with the Community Involvement Center in 2009 to oversee a collaborative network between Rice student volunteer organizations. Ideally, this would allow the many different service groups on campus (Rice Student Volunteer Program, Partnership for the Advancement and Immersion of Refugees, Best Buddies, etc.) to be viewed as working parts of a larger, more comprehensive whole, when in actuality, they are still very much viewed as disjunctive. Though it is wonderful to have specialized organizations for different types of service, the lack of connection and organization between them leads to confusion and difficulty from the perspective of students seeking volunteer opportunities.

A group of students is currently working to compile the websites of each individual student volunteer group into one collective, systematized online volunteer site. This site should be organized in a way to make it easy for students to search for community service opportunities that match their interests and availabilities. Such sites exist and work efficiently at other universities, and developing one for Rice is definitely achievable. Just as importantly, we must make a greater effort to systematize the organization between the various volunteer groups on campus under an overarching system and leverage the strengths of each group into a sustainable, stronger and ultimately more successful community of service.

Once there is a more organized system of volunteering in place, there is one other problem to solve: getting the word out about it. Currently, many of the sources of information about service opportunities at Rice are seemingly hidden from the students' view.

RSVP, an organization created as a community service liaison between Rice University and the Houston community, meets once a week to provide members with information about social issues in the city and opportunities to go out into the community and work toward solving them. However, while around 1,000 students are on the email list, the regular participation and number of active members is much lower and harder to measure. And yet a larger number of students have not even heard of this organization or many of the other service-centered organizations on campus.

Fliers and posters are posted across campus, advertising several large events a year, such as Outreach Day, which draw greater numbers of students to volunteer. Emails are sent out weekly with announcements by college representatives from campus volunteer organizations with information about many community-organized events Rice students can participate in. But fliers go unnoticed under piles of other papers scattered across dining tables, and emails go unread among tens of new messages every day. Simply put, this current methodology for publicizing volunteer opportunities never seems to be quite enough to inform students of regular or long-term opportunities for service in the community.

Therefore, student volunteer groups must take new measures to publicize volunteer events and volunteer organizations because once students are more widely aware of what service opportunities are available, they will be more likely to participate. Another avenue through which publicity can be increased is the service committees at each college rather than just within student volunteer organizations. As colleges themselves announce service opportunities to their members, they will be able to publicize service on a more personal scale while efficiently and effectively reaching more people and fostering a greater group dynamic of service.

Change will not happen overnight, and it will not happen with continued oversight of the systemic issues. The only way to revive a volunteering culture is to reform the volunteering system. The secret of service needs to be revealed.

Cathy Hu is a Martel College freshman.

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