http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1088318.html

I think this is an absolutely horrible idea. It would be total chaos in terms of transportation (getting undergraduates to Wendell for 1 hour of tutoring?), special privileges (would athletes find a loophole?), and actual success rate (I think we can all vouch that knowing a subject doesn't mean one can teach a subject). I think that students who are interested in giving back to their community do so. Those that don't wouldn't be an asset if they are simply in the position because it is required.

Discuss.

5/29/2008 1:35:26 AM

i think its pretty lame too...it would probably lead people to just find ways to beat the system...plus people dont like to be told to be helpful...those that want to do, and those that do not want to help dont(as you stated, dont want to steal your fire lol)...the thing that makes me totally against it is that its per semester...if it was like 50 hours for the whole shebang then that would be different...but going off a 4 year thing thats freaking 160 hours....completely too much imo...

5/29/2008 1:44:58 AM

If they passed such a bill it'd probably have fewer hours and would require students to participate in any form of community service with a total of 15 hours. It's not necessarily a bad idea. It would be tricky to implement and organize, but there's plenty of organizations on campus who would love to snatch up some students to go do some community service. Lots of kids go do it on their own already with their own personal transportation, and many of them would be willing to take some more people with them should they show up to help.

There's a lot to learn doing community service work, and often times it can be a real eye opener for people who were sheltered or who came from a better lifestyle and never really knew what hardship was. It's not a bad thing to make undergrads do a little bit of civil service as a part of their education at a local college. It'll improve the community (whether the kids like handing out bags of canned goods to the poor or not, it still benefits the poor and exposes the kids to reality), it'll teach the kids a few things about civic duty (your responsibility to your community doesn't stop when you get a job that pays enough for you to move into a better neighborhood), and it'll start a good routine that the students will hopefully continue after they graduate (doing community service and donating their time (and maybe their money) to a good cause).

I mean, it's basically government intervention at its worst, and I'd really prefer that the colleges in the area make the decision to require their students to do community service (NOT the state government). I like the idea, but not how they're implementing it. The government would be holding a gun to the head of the universities in NC by telling them to either give up the financial aid they have been receiving or to implement the mandatory community service requirement. I'd rather this guy just run around lobbying for the idea until the universities adopt it, as the universities will be required to provide for the students in some way so that they can do this community service (unless they want the program to be a total failure). At that point it'll require the university to spend money on gasoline, dishing out motor pool vehicles for transport... Basically, the universities should be able to determine, at their own discretion, how big a program like this they could support and how many hours they could then require from each student (per semester, or overall, whatever works). Obviously the more hours there are the more they have to spend to get the students out to the site somewhere.

I'd also like to throw in that I know NCSU's Civil Engineering department will be considering throwing in some requirements like this for their students to graduate. We've got a bad percentage of students that end up giving up on CE and transferring to a non-engineering major before their junior year, so they want to require more student intervention with older students sort of mentoring younger students in a few meetings each semester. The department had a couple of weed-out courses that were just plain BS (as long as you didn't drop the class you'd probably pass, but you'd have no idea wtf was going on and your grade was more or less dependent upon which way the wind was blowing that day), and they've started fixing that (I think) by changing how those classes are taught. Now it's moving into more of a student activism phase, where the department will require students to be more involved in their department to encourage more interest in departmental programs and activities (and to meet some accreditation requirements).

There, you can all post "tl;dr" now.

5/29/2008 3:08:49 AM

Boy, someone needs to tell this moonbat to take a flying leap.

My mom was a teacher in NC public schools for thirty years. I can just imagine her reaction when I tell her the Senate Majority Leader wants to help her "struggling kids" by sending slack-jawed, hungover college students from the local degree mill to "help out."

Hey mom -- your job is difficult! Here's Joe "Six Years to Get My Business Degree" Budweiser from Bumfuck U to "help" you out! The state realizes how hard your job is -- that poor kid from the ghetto whose mom is an alcoholic? No problem! Got some frat boys right here to help you out!

LOL ... man, and California has a bad rep for moonbat legislation. This one takes it for sure.

[Edited on May 29, 2008 at 5:54 AM. Reason : foo]

5/29/2008 5:54:08 AM

This is such a terrible idea.

Can we all agree that teaching is a distinct skill set?

5/29/2008 8:02:15 AM

Yes, this is horrible, this idea

5/29/2008 8:07:24 AM

It's the responsibility of the university system to lay the foundation of requirements for their students. Not the fucking government.

5/29/2008 8:24:10 AM

Quote :

"..plus people dont like to be told to be helpful...those that want to do, and those that do not want to help dont"

Now wait a minute.

Does this apply also to the taxes that are taken from us for welfare and income distribution? If I want the fruits of my labor to go to my family and not some welfare queen...isn't that just being callous and greedy?

5/29/2008 10:59:10 AM

Quote :

"would be required to spend 20 hours a semester tutoring or mentoring students in public elementary, middle or high schools if legislation introduced by Senate Majority Leader Tony Rand becomes law."

This is absolutely retarded. I maybe could be more reasonable to a "community service class" where a student during one semester performs community service but requiring 20 hours a semester is absurd. I have no clue how the fuck i would have fit in my 20 hours last semester. I worked full time; was taking all senior level EE classes; and was trying to stay involved in all my extracurricular activities. During this time i barely found a way to get all my school work, get sleep, and try to maintain a spartan social life with free hours. I have no clue where the fuck i would have fit in 20 hours of tutoring unless i visited little johnnie at 10pm.

5/29/2008 12:22:01 PM

let me get this straight

some gangsters and thugs brutally murder a couple of college kids

and the response is "Hey, let's make college kids do community service"

hmm... yeah that makes sense

5/29/2008 3:58:38 PM

Quote :

"Rand, a Fayetteville Democrat, said the legislation would serve a two-fold purpose: to instill a sense of community and responsibility in college students and to provide help to struggling public school students. College students would serve as mentors and tutors. "

it would instill a sense of requirement, not responsibility. this is stupid. to honor them? how is forcing someone to do something they don't want to do honoring someone who volunteered to do it themself?

20 a semester, so 160 hrs over the course of college. why not force community service for getting a driver's license. or require people to do 300 hrs in order to get a job.

5/29/2008 4:15:11 PM

not bad. there are already public private partnerships in place to take in the influx of 100,000+ public university students in North Carolina that would love the weekly help. Communities in Schools of North Carolina would be a great bridge over that administration gap.

and i adore how everyone here stereotypes every college kid as a)in a frat b) drunk c) lazy or d) stupid. you guys really think highly of yourself and your peers.

side note - "the government" cannot really "interfere" in something they help run, like public universities. its the same requirement UNC used to have with swimming tests, except with the government as the big time donor.

[Edited on May 29, 2008 at 4:23 PM. Reason : tutor ftw!]

5/29/2008 4:22:21 PM

Quote :

"Yes, this is horrible, this idea"

Quote :

"Yes, this is horrible, this idea"

Quote :

"Yes, this is horrible, this idea"

Quote :

"Yes, this is horrible, this idea"

5/29/2008 10:17:26 PM

I'd solve this by saying:

My religion is completely against altruistic acts.

5/29/2008 11:07:33 PM

This would maybe make sense if your undergrad degree was in education. But still, that should be something left up to the university, not some idiot in the state senate.

1) Being in college doesn't mean you know anything about anything
2) Not everyone likes being around kids
3) This system would be so easy to find loopholes in. Just like NHS in high school

5/29/2008 11:47:18 PM

Terrible idea.


This has clearly made Durham a better city!

[Edited on May 29, 2008 at 11:53 PM. Reason : .]

5/29/2008 11:50:46 PM

This pisses me off SO BAD. Why the fuck does society like to PUNISH us for BETTERING ourselves? They keep us disarmed, uninformed, and completely at their mercy. And we're the people who are supposed to be RUNNING this bitch, later. Why is a 21 year-old college student treated as more dangerous than a 21 year-old blue-collar worker with just a high school degree? Fucking Animal House stereotyping...

5/30/2008 12:09:58 AM

The fact that this is connected to the killings pushes the absurdity to a new level

5/30/2008 12:42:56 AM

^

Not just because it's illogical, but because he feels it's appropriate to use their names for a pet political cause. How indecent, classless, and tacky. Like I said, this guy needs to take a flying leap. No shame at all.

5/30/2008 5:41:06 AM

Quote :

"and i adore how everyone here stereotypes every college kid as a)in a frat b) drunk c) lazy or d) stupid. you guys really think highly of yourself and your peers."

I don't see a universal stereotype of all students as much as I do a universal stereotype of the kind of individual who would corrupt and ruin this kind of a system from the get go. Forget the frat part for one second, but the number of lazy, I came to school to party, and uninterested in helping 5 year olds people on campus is much higher than the number of do-gooders. Just because a sliver of the indifferent would turn out just to get it done and graduate doesn't mean that the many more apathetic will be any kind of asset.

5/30/2008 11:37:12 AM

Hey ^ i came to school to party. I just so happened to also get a degree in electrical engineering finishing with a 3.4 in the process. so STFU

5/30/2008 12:39:40 PM

^ I don't see why you're so stressed about what I said. I had a great time in college, and double majored in CSC and Econ, and had a better GPA than you did, but I would still do a really shitty job sitting in an elementary school tutoring kids. I did coach youth soccer, and that was my "community" thing, but I would have hated to do it if it were required.

If you're singularly focused on being 18 years old, which I think means responsible only to yourself and your own dreams, and then you're forced to be involved with 8 years old, it just isn't a good concoction.

5/30/2008 2:27:28 PM

It is against my religion to subsidize your education.

5/30/2008 2:57:18 PM

^^ nvm i think i misinterpreted what you said.

5/30/2008 3:51:35 PM

Quote :

"this guy needs to take a flying leap. No shame at all."

5/30/2008 5:08:07 PM

bttt

6/4/2008 6:55:53 PM

If you have any sort of scholarship from public funds, I don't think this is unreasonable at all. You can find your own money elsewhere if you don't like it.

6/5/2008 9:02:57 AM

^ That's an interesting point, but most scholarships already have requirements such as a minimum GPA. I think certain groups ask their scholarship recipients to do charity work anyway (Caldwell, Park, etc.), but there should definitely be a minimum amount of value given (I would think greater than 50% of tuition) before anything is required from the student besides being a good student.

6/5/2008 11:52:45 AM