I usually make it a habit not to talk about classes that I am currently taking. It makes for some awkward situations. But there are times that I simply can’t resist (or, as it is with this case, have nothing else to write about).
The first day that I started a particular class this semester caused me to immediately become so enraged that I wanted to rush to the registrar and yell at someone. Some of the required curriculum at this university boggles my mind. What is the meaning of forcing a student, some of which are commuters with full time jobs, to perform community service in order to get a grade in class?
What really ticked me off was the fact that I am indeed paying for this community service through my tuition fees. The grade that I would be getting at the end of the semester would have something to do with how well I can write a paper based upon my experience slaving myself away for some non-profit organization.
What, you’re telling me I can’t just stand on the corner in Newark with a cardboard sign that says, “Will work IT for free (non-profits only, please)?”
But what originally got me thinking about this was if there was any benefit to the university for having its students perform community service on behalf of their class. Of course, there was an existing list of organizations needing free help.
I am going to be liberal with the mathematics here, but lets say that there are twenty students in the class. That means that each semester, for each enrolled student in this class full of twenty students, now has to perform community service.
I’m not quite sure how many sections are being taught this semester, but lets say that there are sixty students enrolled in three sections of this particular course. Each student must perform thirty hours of community service.
Okay, keep up.
That is twenty students, three sections, and thirty hours per student. That means this school, utilizing my quite liberal calculation, is squeezing eighteen hundred hours of community service per semester out of the student’s wallets. That’s a lot of free labor.
There are some people that might think that community service builds character. But shouldn’t that be my choice to give up my precious hours (that are far and few as it already is)?
While I am in college, slaving away with a paper and pencil at math and physics problems, I don’t expect my university to take advantage of me. That, of course, is reserved for my future employer that wishes me to on-call seven days a week twenty four hours a day.
So what’s next? Are we going to be required to perform a campus cleanup as part of our humanities curriculum?
Before the hate mail and phone calls from administrators start to file in I want to make it clear: I am not against community service. I am against this being in a required class. If this class was an elective, and it was upfront that I would need to perform said requirements, then I would absolutely have no complaint (I would just not take the course). But that’s not the case, is it?
If you are going to dangle the “A” above my head like I am dog at least let me choose a company that I am going to learn something at. I enjoy the challenge of something new. I would much rather have the option of working for a company for thirty hours where I would learn something other than how my existing skills that I learned outside of academia are being slaved out to an organization that should be putting money into the economy.
I am pretty sure how much I am worth, but because this school will be my future alma mater (someday, if I am finally able to pass that damn Calculus III class) I will charge the New Jersey minimum wage of $7.15 per hour. New Jersey Institute of Technology, you owe me $214.50, before state and federal taxes.
I’m sure the check will be in the mail.
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