Students truly benefit the community
UNC News Services : The Herald-Sun
May 12, 2007 : 6:01 pm ET

May 12, 2007 : 6:01 pm ET

Perhaps more than any graduates before them, the Class of 2007, which has its commencement at Carolina this morning, has changed Chapel Hill.

These seniors in caps and gowns today didn't necessarily change the town with their style or their interests or their hobbies. They didn't, clearly, have the same kind of effect like, say, their peers of the late '60s and early '70s did, turning the community into a hotbed of student activism and protest.

No, the Class of 2007 had a quieter -- but no less striking -- impact. Many of the students in the class became a part of the community; they helped the town in a way that had not been done before.

The Class of 2007 -- all 3,039 graduating seniors, not to mention the master's and doctoral students -- includes 96 students who will be wearing Carolina blue and white cords on their academic regalia today. The cords designate them as the university's first graduating class of Public Service Scholars.

The public service program, which began in 2003, is for students who wanted to combine service and education. And did they ever.

The first class of service scholars logged more than 165,000 total service hours, completing an average of almost 450 hours per graduate, working to improve the quality of life on the campus, throughout the community and, yes, across the state and around the world.

These Public Service Scholars have made life better here. They have worked at UNC Hospitals, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, the Inter-Faith Council for Social Service, Habitat for Humanity and the Durham Crisis Response Center, among many other local agencies.

They have made a difference.

On Commencement Day, there is generally an almost palpable sigh of relief that goes up across the community -- the students are leaving, the students are leaving! We'll have more parking, less traffic, shorter waits for tables. The town, some of us feel, will be ours again.

It's easy, then, to think of the students as temporary interlopers, living off our largesse, a necessary annoyance and inconvenience. But the Public Service Scholars who are graduating today should remind all of how essential the students are to us. This community is a good place to live because of the students -- not despite them.