Community engagement requirements at Catlin Gabel Upper School
By Lewis Anderson ’24
Students working on the little forest, photo courtesy of the Catlin Gabel website.
Catlin Gabel School (CGS) Dean of Students, John Harnetiaux, said, “We have backed away from having a [community engagement] requirement, primarily because we’ve seen how it can get commodified into more of a transactional relationship.”
On the other hand, “community engagement in its best form is like you have this reciprocal ongoing relationship with this community where you're learning about them, they’re learning about you, and everyone's benefiting,” said Harnetiaux. “When done well, it can be a really powerful experience.”
As the CGS community engagement coordinator Cristy Vo said, “We don't really want it to become a checklist or a transaction or something superficial that one can just complete.”
Instead, students should “stop and think more fully about what it is that you want to be connected to and why,” said Vo. She wants “to get students kind of innately curious and wanting to engage with the community.”
Without a mandate, “we have students who don't do any engagement their entire 4 years here,” said Harnetiaux. However, based on the community engagement survey last year a lot of students are doing community service without any mandate.
According to Dave Whitson, a former community engagement coordinator at CGS, “a whopping 15 hours/year” was the mandatory community service requirement before the 2013/2014 school year. That was the year Palma Scholar students proposed removing the mandatory community engagement requirement in the Upper School “to encourage students to pursue their passion and make meaningful change in the form of Community Service, instead of merely checking off boxes.”
After Catlin removed the mandate, it was replaced with a system where people proposed projects, checked in with their advisors about them, and gave a presentation at the end of the year to their C and C advisory groups. The best projects were presented to the Upper School hoping that “peer pressure [would] motivate the student body.”
Additionally, upperclassmen would meet with underclassmen to make sure that they were completing their service and to motivate the freshmen and sophomores to take community service seriously. None of this is happening anymore.
Community engagement moved through “gradual erosion,” said Whitson, from what was described above to what we have now: a couple of resources and clubs to help people find opportunities. “Eventually, others took on the role of community service director/coordinator, made small changes,” said Whitson. “Then COVID hit, most community service stopped for a while, and it has been a long road back.”
According to Harnetiaux, part of the problem was that “we have not gotten to the place in a while where there is a community engagement coordinator in their second year in the position.”
“I'd say it's been really disappointing these last few years actually,” said CGS senior Eva Vu-Stern, one of the three leaders of the Environmental Action Team (EAT), about student engagement with sustainability. For example, Vu-Stern said, “When Julia, Teresa, and I did our can recycling project where we were collecting cans for donations to get some funding for the club and also just to promote recycling, we had a lot of people throwing food in our bins, trash, and even though we had clearly labeled it. It was really disappointing.”
“More community engagement specifically with sustainability work would be really helpful,” said Vu-Stern. “But I'm not sure if they need to mandate it.”
The news about a lack of a community engagement requirement was met with a mixed reaction from Catlin students.
When asked if she wanted a community engagement mandate, Lilah Cash, a sophomore, said, “I don't really know. I feel like part of it is like, ‘oh it would be nice to have it mandatory’, but … if it were mandatory how I would feel later, I would find it kind of hard with all of the workload.”
Senior Oscar Goranson partly agreed with her saying, “I don't think there should be a community engagement mandate. Some students at Catlin are probably too busy. Also, there is more value in doing it voluntarily.”
However, Claire Druker, a senior, supports a mandate because “it is important for people to get involved in service, and not do nothing.” Senior Carter Alfrey agreed, saying, “I think a mandate could be good.”
Senior Matthew Vestergaard disagrees because, “People should do community service because they want to, not because they have to.” Similarly, Junior Annika Sirtori said, “There should not be a community engagement mandate because it is far more rewarding when it is voluntary.”
Ultimately, CGS has decided that making community engagement more meaningful for the students who do it voluntarily is worth having some students not participate.