Forced volunteering is a contradiction, but has become a classroom tool across the campus. From LAS to senior colloquium, students are doing mandatory service hours as a class requirement.

This can lead to two obvious extremes – a student who finds a program he or she enjoys and continues to volunteer after the mandatory hours are done, or the student who goes and gets the form signed and does little else. In many cases, a students’ reactions are somewhere in between. They enjoy it but can’t find time for it after the mandatory hours are up.

Overall, forced volunteering is a great opportunity for students with busy schedules to do some good for the community. For students with jobs, class, clubs, Greek life and the million other things students can fit on their plates it makes time in their schedule. Then they volunteer instead of saying they want to but don’t have time.

Forced volunteering could be the perfect opportunity for the busiest of students to make the world a little better, even if they can only commit a few hours. But for when it’s not, there needs to be something more. Including the option of volunteering in courses is a good idea, but it should not be mandatory.

Giving students the options of writing a paper, taking part in a campus activity or doing service work is a better idea than making volunteer work the only option. This way, students aren’t forced into something they don’t want to do. For those who do want to volunteer, it’s a still a perfect opportunity.

Students may benefit from other activities just as much as mandatory volunteering. Mandatory volunteering can be an eye-opening experience for some students, but for the rest there needs to be another choice.