I know I promised myself I wouldn’t post lessons that come from classes (it’s like cheating), but this is kind of borderline. I’ve written a previous post about a ‘field trip’ this particular class of mine took, and how this is a civic engagement class where we go out and get to actually do things. Tonight, we all met up at the Student Food Bank here on campus.
This is actually really neat. I’ve never heard of another university having this sort of thing — we have an actual food bank, run only by students (in fact, this is the only food bank in the nation that is entirely run by students!), that caters to students. All you need is to be enrolled in at least one class and not have a meal plan to qualify, and you basically come in and get to choose from a selection of free food that includes canned goods and dry pastas and beans. Anyone familiar with food banks or food pantries will know what I’m talking about. The idea is to have food available for those who are either too poor to afford it or otherwise don’t have the means to get enough food to sustain themselves (like lacking a car and a way to get to the grocery store, or simply not having time).
The clientele usually consists of graduate students, although they have noticed an increase in undergrad students as well. And the vast majority of clients are international students, or married students with families to raise, some of them single-parent families.
Now, I was there on a class assignment. And I can truthfully say that, were it not a class assignment, I probably wouldn’t be there. No real reason, right? Sure, it’s a great thing to do, but I’m a pretty busy person. And I assumed that’s the general attitude of most college students today.
So I was really quite surprised when, as we stood there talking with the food bank director, student after student just kept pouring into the place. They’d come by themselves and just dump their coats and immediately get to work, or they’d come in groups of two or three and be chatting loudly, or they’d wander in looking a little scared and announce they were here to help, what should they do? By the time things really got up and running, our class not included, I swear to you, there must have been forty-some volunteers. And the room we were in was not a very large one at all. Probably the size of a normal person’s basement.
Today I learned that some people don’t need a reason to volunteer.
I kept wondering why they were there. Did they get extra credit for a class? Did they have to fulfill some kind of community service requirement? Were they being punished (I kept thinking of prisoners getting hours… don’t ask me why)? But as I worked filling the bags and bringing them out to people, I overheard the conversations. These were just people doing something and having a good time. No one was talking about a class or a requirement. Many people were explaining aspects of the food bank to their friends, which made me think that they’d encouraged and convinced their friends to come along.
And this wasn’t like a good-will thing either. Like how we suddenly get the urge to help our community around Thanksgiving and Christmas. There was no holiday spirit here. This was just a normal day where people wanted some food and they were there to help them get it. And they didn’t seem to need validation for their actions — they didn’t want credit, they didn’t gush over how fulfilling and amazing it was to help others. They were simply doing it because they wanted to do it.
I was really quite surprised. And you would think I wouldn’t be… I dunno. It seems like everyone — including myself — needs to have some extra motivation to go out of our lives and volunteer or engage and help people. So I suppose you could say it was refreshing to see some people who didn’t need a reason or a justification. This was just what they wanted to do with their Wednesday nights.
