One of the requirements necessary to graduate with an undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire is the completion of a service learning requirement. Students must perform 30 hours of service to the community in order to develop, according to the guidelines to service learning released by the Eau Claire faculty senate, \a sense of civic/social responsibility even though they may also be focused on career preparation."" Students have been allowed to perform any type of service they wanted to in the past provided it somehow related to the subject matter they were studying.
That is about to change. Today, the Eau Claire faculty senate will discuss a proposal that would make it so students could not perform any sort of religious practice in order to fulfill their service learning requirement.
The proposal would make it so that any volunteer work on behalf of a religious institution, such as missionary work or teaching at a religious school, would not be counted toward a student's service learning requirement. Secular work in a religious setting, such as work for religious charities like Habitat for Humanity, would still be allowed.
On its surface, this proposal makes sense. A public university cannot give the appearance that it prefers one religion over another. ""We are a state institution,"" said Associate Vice Chancellor Steven Tallant. ""If we award credit for engaging in [a religion's] activities, we are endorsing that religion.""
The proposed policy change is, however, inconsistent. While religious advocacy does not count toward the requirement, other types of advocacy, including political solicitation, will continue to be worth service learning credit.
We applaud that UW-Eau Claire is wary of endorsing any religion, but feel the change in policy is coming for the wrong reasons. While the faculty senate adequately addresses the Constitutional problems of a public institution seeming to endorse a religion, its reasoning seems to be that doing so would protect UWEC from lawsuits. This is a legitimate position, but it does not address the problem of students choosing to ""give back to their community"" by joining an advocacy group unaffiliated with religion.
The point of the service learning requirement is to enhance students' learning experiences while attempting to benefit the surrounding community. We fail to see how advocating for non-religious causes helps the community any more than recruiting membership for a church or synagogue. While the new proposal is a step in the right direction, we would like to see Eau Claire stop giving service learning credit for any kind of activity that does not have direct benefits for the community.
