Community Service

I was doing some research earlier today on athletic departments and the amount of community service hours that they contribute to their communities every year when I ran into a few other stories that caught my attention (by the way, a lot of athletic departments do a phenomenal job in their communities and I wonder if enough people realize that). There were stories on people, and in this particular instance, student-athletes, that got in trouble with the law and were put on probation a certain number of years and they were also "sentenced" to each complete 100 hours of community service.

Obviously, it's not just student-athletes that are made to do community service as "punishment." This is a similar "fate" shared by very many people that get in trouble with the law. But, it made me wonder about why we make people that have legal programs complete community service hours as a part of their plea deals or sentences. Perhaps it is a way for these people to pay their debt to society, and I can buy that to a certain extent. Economically speaking, an efficient volunteer program can contribute an untold amount of money to businesses, corporate and non-profit alike. But I'm not fine with the idea that community service is used as punishment, not when it means that people are contributing something positive to others in need.

Of course, certain community service projects can consist of mopping floors, digging roadside ditches, and picking up garbage from the side of a road. Hey that's fine by me, in fact that sounds like a lot of non-fun! But let's please refrain from calling that kind of work community service. I have no doubt that the community as a whole or even a segment of the community is benefiting from the activities described above, but they certainly don't capture my idealistic picture of community service. Maybe court-mandated community service should be called community "labor," or community drudgery. Let's just not call this community service when people are being forced to do these things and when they are doing it to avoid a steeper legal sentencing. Let's be honest about what it is. I know this argument opens itself up to a lot of counter-arguments, many of them valid (I'm not going to list all the possible counter-arguments), I'm just offended that what I do for a living is considered a punishment when I think that it's a privilege. I don't like the perception that people may get about community service, as if the act itself, of contributing positively with no monetary benefit, is a momentary purgatory for the legally challenged. To the contrary, it is deeply impacting, just as it was to my good friends Marcus and Elliot who are in the picture, helping to paint Stanley's home.

I also ran into a USA Today article on athletes and community labor sentences, which I will provide the link to here: http://www.usatoday.com/sports/2006-05-04-community-service_x.htm. Note on the bottom how a person is quoted as saying: "Community service is not fun — no matter how charitable it sounds." I strongly disagree, and doubt that the person who said that has any idea about the power of community service. But maybe that's the entire purpose of doing what we do here at the Hope for Stanley Foundation. Come to New Orleans, I promise that your efforts will not only be charitable and deeply appreciated, but that they will be life-changing (no court-ordered sentence is required).

Horacio Ruiz