Seven million dollars is up for grabs and GW should be doing everything it can to get its fair share.

More specifically speaking, the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act that is waiting to be signed into law will provide $7 million divided among 25 institutions to encourage service learning. It is not yet clear what qualifications a university would have to meet to qualify for this funding, but GW should make it a priority to become one of these schools.

As it is, service learning is definitely a part of the GW subculture, and we send consistently high numbers of graduates into respectable service programs like Teach for America, the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps. Becoming one of the schools that benefits from this act would likely expand the resources of the Office of Community Service and enable GW individuals and organizations to do that much more for the community.

The bill, provided it is signed, will also vastly increase the size of the AmeriCorps program, from 75,000 to 250,000 spots, which could be just what GW graduates are looking for before they enter the job market.

Often our prime D.C. location means that opportunities fall into GW’s lap, whether it’s the flocks of underclassman interning on the Hill or the famous speakers that find their way onto campus. However, in can be easy for something that requires some extra effort to slip through the cracks. An explicit goal of the University should be to make sure we are one of the schools that benefits from the extra funding and not leave it to chance that we happen to be selected.

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