The cost of leadership

When it comes to students working on campus, there is often a choice between being employed and being intensively involved in a student organization.

The Socioeconomic Diversity Initiative argues that students receiving work-study funding have difficulty balancing campus involvement and their work. The SDI cites that this difficulty particularly impacts the ability of a student to lead an organization: “Working makes it even more difficult for students to hold major leadership positions.” Students in this situation often remain general body members of the organizations because they lack the time to pursue a larger commitment. To make matters worse, the trade-off between having a job and leading a campus group is not just about time; sometimes leadership roles can add hundreds of dollars to the cost of participating in groups.

Right now, some student groups provide stipends for students in top leadership positions. However, the groups that provide this type of support are very limited—students with work-study commitments will have a hard time running a campus group, not to mention rising through the ranks.

But Duke can address this issue: The solution is to extend stipends to students on financial aid to participate in community service, broadly defined, to supplement work-study salaries. It would be easy to establish a scholarship for work-study students, meant to catalyze students to energetically contribute to Duke and the surrounding community in lieu of work-study hours.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill already makes a point to invest in high potential student leaders with financial need. The UNC Bonner Leader Program is a competitive program only open to incoming students who are eligible for work-study funding. The program selects first-year students who display an interest in community service and campus involvement. Selected students receive a stipend throughout their four years that allows them to focus on campus leadership positions and community engagement. During their junior and senior years, Bonner Leaders are expected to hold campus leadership positions, utilizing the skills they gained during their freshman and sophomore years.

We should adopt this program to Duke and broaden it in the process. A similar program, available to students of any class, could accept applicants on a competitive basis and provide funding by the hour for community service and leadership activities. The program need not fund any particular leadership positions—it need only invest in students who want to contribute to the campus community in any way, whether through conventional service or, say, artistic performance. And it need not provide broad stipends: Students should receive funding per hour of community service to match hours not spent at work-study jobs.

Of course, oversight would be crucial, but not insurmountable. The scholarship program could operate just like a job, requiring log sheets and supervisor signatures in exchange for funding.

This program should be easy to fund. We expect a small scholarship program for student leaders will be a magnet for alumni donations, especially because of Duke’s strong antecedent commitments to financial aid and community service.