Universities should do more to restore the institutions that matter most by encouraging and requiring students to serve where we are. We can make clear to the next generation that there is a responsibility to act and serve, not just to watch and comment. We can cause young people to build relationships with each other that transcend particular issues or moments in time. We can reinforce the amiability of our people through voluntary association with each other – including with people with whom we don’t always agree. We can better develop both educated and engaged citizens who are prepared to make a difference in the life of the community we serve.
And, ideally, we can come to understand other points of view that are different from our own and learn to resolve those differences in productive ways without irreparably damaging the satisfactions that have become even more deeply important to us.
Students could be volunteering at a shelter or coaching a Little League team. They could be serving on a county zoning commission or helping to teach at the church pre-school. They could be gathering food for the poor, serving in the national guard, judging the science fair, or taking the blood pressure of those without healthcare. And organizing those things. And inspiring others to participate in those things. And raising money for those things. And strengthening the institutions that perpetuate those things.