Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 12, 1993 TAG: 9304120279
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
COLLEGE AID, NATIONAL SERVICE
IN TIDEWATER Virginia, Hampton University President William Harvey wants to waive tuition for as many as 750 Hampton students, in exchange for their devoting a year to community service. In Washington, D.C., Bill Clinton wants to give young people a chance to repay federal student loans through a national-service program.While differing in the details, the two plans share a common philosophical underpinning: Taking from the community implies giving to the community. It is a powerful concept. It is a profoundly conservative concept.
Call it responsibility.
Apart from the obvious differences - private institution vs. government program, free tuition vs. loan forgiveness - the fact that Hampton is a predominantly black school gives Harvey's proposal an extra wrinkle.
Community service involves more than social services for the urban poor, and the faces of the urban poor are hardly all black. But the needs of the urban poor are among the most acute in America, and the faces of the urban poor are disproportionately black.
Middle-class whites have no less a responsibility - there's that word again - than middle-class blacks to work to improve conditions and opportunities for Americans on the lowest rung of the social and economic ladder. But as a practical matter, the mostly black Hampton students and graduates embarking on a middle-class life may be particularly well-placed to make a direct impact on neighborhoods in need of help and role models.
The Hampton plan depends on raising $50 million from individuals, corporations and foundations, to offset forgone tuition revenues. Clinton's plan envisions a $9.5-billion expenditure over the next five years. It would start small, however, and only after three years or so would it provide the 100,000 national-service jobs that the administration foresees.
A slow start is OK. Beyond the omnipresent fiscal considerations, there is the depressing history of good ideas in government coming to grief because they are too hurriedly and too sloppily implemented, and then turned into political footballs.
Exactly what kind of work should qualify for national service? How would compliance be monitored and enforced? What would be the impact on military recruiting? How much bureaucracy would be necessary?
Such questions shouldn't be left for only the preprogrammed naysayers to ask and answer. The questions should also be of vital concern to supporters of the national-service concept, because upon the answers may ultimately depend the fate of the idea. By starting small, intent can be tested against real-world result, and modifications made before institutional inertia or critics' claws subvert the program.
That will require responsible - again, that word - leadership, which of course can be said of most things. The type of responsibility specifically raised by proposals like those of Presidents Harvey and Clinton is the responsibility of citizenship.
Under this traditionally American and republican conception, civic benefits are not things to which one is "entitled" by status, as if one were a lord or vassal. Rather, civic benefits involve a reciprocal contract among free men and women: Benefits are accepted from the community , and something is given to the community in return.