Education: Silver Bullets for the Needy

Ah, spring break. The traditional time to shed campus cares and haul hormones off for some sun and fun. But as the recess started last week at Vanderbilt University, one group of students was off in pursuit of more serious exertions. A score went to a Sioux reservation in South Dakota to do painting, tiling and light carpentry at a Y.M.C.A. center; a dozen arrived in Juarez, Mexico, to help build a "serviglesia," a church to serve the poor; another twelve headed for Appalachia's "Valley of Despair" to plant fir trees and work on construction and furniture-building projects. Says Vanderbilt Senior Ethel Johnson, 21, who stayed in Nashville with another team sowing gardens, making curtains and teaching English in a community of Cambodian refugees: "Students are vastly underestimated. They have a real desire to get out there and do something to try to help and to have their eyes opened."

Vanderbilt's Alternative Spring Break is simply one rustling of a new spirit of volunteerism blowing across campuses. In California, 40 Stanford volunteers took time out two weekends ago to paint an elementary school gym in East Menlo Park. In Boston, Wellesley undergrads tend to homeless women every night at Rosie's Place, a local shelter. At Northwestern in Evanston, Ill., volunteers have started an "adopt a grandparent" program to aid the elderly. Students at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor help low-income people with tax returns.

No one can say exactly how many are involved overall; the best estimate is that 15% to 25% of collegians engage regularly in some form of public service. Many campus volunteer agencies are finding that interest is higher than it has been since the early '70s. Declares Stanford University President Donald Kennedy: "Everybody's view of this generation was that they were careerist, that they were yuppies inthe making. I always thought that was a bum rap."

Today's volunteers, however, are no throwback to the '60s activists. "It's not enough to say peace, love and happiness," notes Brown Sophomore David Graff, who worked in a storefront school in Harlem and is now a big brother to a youngster in Providence. "We need to be realistic about our expectations so we don't burn out." Linda Chisholm, co-director of the Partnership for Service Learning, an organization that has sent students to assist schools in Jamaica and Ecuador, explains, "They haven't decided who is right and who is wrong. And they aren't saying that others should change. They're saying, 'I'll change. I'll do it.' " The Peace Corps is enjoying an increase in applicants who are college graduates, and Spokeswoman Alixe Glen characterizes most of them as "realistic idealists."