Community Service: Voluntary or Forced?

Community service (noun) -

 voluntary work intended to help people in a particular area.

Does this definition apply to the way community service is used today? Community service should no longer be considered voluntary, due to the fact that it is now mandatory for all high school students. For example, Pilibos requires 100 out-of-school hours and 20 in-school hours; one cannot graduate without completing 120 hours at the least. Even 120 hours is considered “too little” to most colleges.  "Many young people said that their motive in becoming involved was to make a stronger case to please college admissions officers--regardless of whether they were applying to an Ivy League school, a state university or technical college"(Chaptman,1). If community service was not something that was so forced, it would have more meaning to people today. Community service that is completed while still in high school is meaningless and is mostly done because it needs to be done. "Their attachments are more fleeting and there is a lack of attachments that seem to pervade", says Lewis Friedland, a professor of journalism and mass communication, while speaking of the topic of today's generation. 

Although enforcing community service does show the importance of it to people at a young age and still does its job in helping the community, the fact that it is mandatory makes it lose some of its value. Once something has lost value, it is hard for it to gain it back. Nowadays, people do not look at community service as a way to help others and be a good person voluntarily; they look at it as something that is obligated by their schools and could potentially affect their future or future college/university. And that is the sad truth about our generation.