Looking to make a difference, Yalies volunteer

Both on campus and in the city, individuals and student organizations reach out to the community.

The city of New Haven is a significant factor in the decision to apply to Yale. Every year, numerous prospective students turn Yale down because of uniformed prejudices about Yale's surrounding communities.

JULIA TIERNAN/YH Youth Day, held twice a year, is a chance for Yale athletes to interact with New Haven children.

But many of the students who ultimately do choose Yale consider its urban setting an advantage. The city is ripe with opportunitiy for community service and volunteer activities. Nearly 40 percent of the student body participates in some sort of volunteer program or organization, be it tutoring in a local school, working in a soup kitchen, or joining the Yale chapters of the ACLU or Amnesty International. Service possibilities are practically endless. It is very likely that you will become involved in some sort of volunteer or community oriented activity during your four years here.

To call the campus polarized would be an exaggeration, but it would also be wrong to deny that certain "crowds" do exist, just as they do in any sizable community. Athletic teams, singing groups, and fraternities are just a few of these social circles. Community service and volunteering, however, transcend this kind of grouping. No matter how dedicated one is to volunteer work, it would be impossible to become acquainted with all of the students who participate in such activities. It is even difficult to keep track of all of the service groups which exist on campus, let alone the individuals who staff them.

The reasons behind students' individual motivation are too numerous to list. Some Yalies are driven to volunteer by the shock of seeing urban poverty up close every day; others have done community service since high school and opt to continue similar activities; still others enjoy the feeling of being able to share a particular skill or talent with others.

The one element which unites all of these segments of the volunteering population is a simple desire to help others, a unique trait which has the potential to match a football player and a Glee Club member in the same community outreach program, working together on the same project.

A large number of student service organizations fall under the auspices of Dwight Hall at Yale. Founded in 1886 and located on Old Campus, Dwight Hall is the nation's only independent collegiate volunteer umbrella organization. Since the group is neither financed nor staffed by the University, Dwight Hall is able to voice its own opinion on several various town-gown issues such as when it expressed its support for Yale's striking unions in 1996.

More than 60 groups are members of Dwight Hall, and their services fall under headings ranging from Hunger and Homelessness to Literacy to Youth Mentorship and so on. One of the largest organizations in Dwight Hall is the Yale Hunger and Homelessness Action Project (YHHAP), an umbrella overseeing 10 different service projects. Among other things, YHHAP members help to staff local soup kitchens, work with adults in a literacy program at the New Haven Homeless Resource Center, and run their own political action group. Once each semester, YHHAP organizes an awareness week packed with activities, including a campus-wide fast, during which students are asked to donate their dining hall meals for a day in order to raise money for local, national, and international groups.

YHHAP belongs to a class of Dwight Hall programs associated with campus and city-wide activism. Perhaps the most vocal and demonstrative of these organizations, the Student Labor Action Coalition (SLAC). The Yale Student Environmental Coalition (YSEC). YSEC, a group that pursues a wide variety of environmental projects, succeeded in its efforts to ban the serving of beef the 1997 Spring Fling. Their objective was to raise student awareness about the vast resources used in modern-day cattle raising.

Completely distant from the activist branch of Dwight Hall is a class of programs which allows students to interact with children, one of the more popular forms of community service. The Ulysses S. Grant Foundation brings especially motivated and talented students to the University. Children are enrolled in small English and math classes led by Yale students, who teach reading and math—and can often design their own classes and curriculums. The program gives its student-teachers students a chance to form close relationships with the New Haven youths in the classes.

Another program targeted at helping young children is TIES (Tutoring in the Elementary Schools). The program is run on a residential college level, which allows for the involvement of interested Yale students who may not have heard about the program through conventional channels. Organizations such as Yale Students for Reproductive Rights and Yale Student AIDS Educators have a more narrow focus, but can also be found under the Dwight Hall umbrella.

In an effort to try to forge some cohesion between the extraordinarily diverse programs offered by Dwight Hall, the Social Justice Network (SJN) was formed in the fall semester of 1996. The SJN is aimed primarily at attempting to coordinate and potentially unify the efforts of some of Yale's ideologically similar organizations. It is also, however, a step toward creating a more connected "service community" on the Yale campus, something which currently exists in concept only.

In the spring semester of every year, the University holds an event called the President's Community Service Dinner, an evening that brings together several hundred Yale students, just a fraction of those who do volunteer work during the year, at Commons for a special meal and a keynote speaker. When one considers the sheer number of people who attend this year-end event, it becomes clear how deeply the volunteer spirit pervades the Yale student body.

There is no exclusive club to join, no central leadership to follow--rather, scores of opportunities are available. The various possibilities that exist to improve New Haven make Yale the perfect place for energetic students to make a difference. Exploring these possibilities could lead to some of the most important lessons of your Yale education. Volunteering is everywhere, and is one of the most special parts of the Yale experience.

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