Journal Entry - 1/02/2007
HC395 Service Learning Trip

We talked today about what service-learning means, especially in the context of academic "rigor" and how it differs from internships or other such things. One interesting connection I found pertained to Putnam's (or the French Guy's) assertion that "social capital is the glue that binds society together".

In the "urban patterns" chapter of my Human Geography (An Introduction to Human Geography: The Cultural Landscape, Eight Edition) book by James M. Rubenstein, last semester, we talked about the "vicious cycle" of social decline in urban neighborhoods....
The main points about this issue are on page 458:

• The geographic concentration of low-income residents in inner-city neighborhoods is causing financial problems for cities.
• This is because they cannot afford to pay the taxes to support the public services upon which they rely, causing a gap between a city's supported tax base and the return of tax revenues from that base.
• In order to close the gap, there are two choice (according to the book):
• 1) Reduces services (i.e. close libraries, eliminate certain public-transit routes, cut trash collection frequency).
  Besides laying off some workers (resulting in hardship), it also encourages middle-class residents and industry to move out.
• 2) Raise tax revenues (which can force out industry and wealthier residents who don't want to pay), or 'expand their tax base' by constructing new building projects in the CBD (central business district) and demolishing old ones. Tax Revenue is still much higher than old buildings, even with subsidies and tax breaks. Businesses like hotels, restaurants, etc. provide minimum-wage jobs (personal service). Despite the benefits, it can also take away funding from inner-city projects like subsidized playgrounds. Biggest problem is that federal government's subsidies have declined, making the fiscal problems more apparent."

It seems that according to my Human Geography Book, when the city's ability to fund its public services through taxes fails to keep up with the cost of doing so, there are no good options - either cut the services (and associated jobs), or raise taxes by improvement projects that can raise the cost of buying/renting a home and divert money from other projects.

So what are we to do? I suspect that there is a third option that nobody has thought of yet - adding in service learning or civic engagement, as we talked about today. Since raising taxes increases discontent and/or reduces support for public projects among industry and wealthy citizens, and cities cannot handle the entire burden, service-learning citizens and internships/volunteers can fill the gap by working with organizations and city services to provide the missing/reduced services with a much needed boost.

A good example of this is Andrea Vernon's story about the United Way collaboration w/ the city services. Although perhaps, a better example is her little blurb about Ellie Hall (new Poverello director) and posting the volunteer positions at UM Career Service's Student Job Site. Students who apply for these positions (I just checked and there are 50 volunteer positions available!) can possibly receive academic credit through OCE/Andrea Vernon.....win for UM, and these organizations get free labor (win for them).....which enables them to provide more services to poor/low-income/homeless (win for them as well!!!!). A win-win-win model.

By improving incentives/opportunities for students and other citizens to participate in volunteer/service-learning/internship positions, it reduces the burden on cities to provide these public services using a finite tax base. When this happens, that "social glue" is cemented, students/citizens feel more fulfilled, the democratic process is set in motion...and (hopefully) everybody goes home happy.