The D.C. Student Alliance is planning a community service initiative called Students Serve on Oct. 23.
The day is meant to encourage college students from the D.C.-metro area to volunteer in the community.
Formerly known as the D.C. Metro University Student Alliance, the D.C. Student Alliance is an organization involving the student governments of 15 universities in the D.C. area that convenes, shares ideas from each school and collaborates on events for D.C. college students.
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Fifteen campuses are involved in the D.C. Student Alliance: |
Former AU Student Government President Andy MacCracken is now executive director of the Student Alliance, one of the organizations top two positions.
“The more we can get students to think of themselves as D.C. students in addition to AU students and [George Washington University] students and Howard [University] students, the more unified we will be,” MacCracken said in an e-mail.
The idea of Students Serve came up when the Howard and GWU representatives shared that their schools were planning community service events on Oct. 23, which is National Make a Difference Day.
The board of directors decided that all the campuses should coordinate a region-wide, multi-campus service activity on that date. The D.C. Student Alliance also decided to do a service event again in late March and planned to continue in the future.
Howard, AU and GW will be hosting the volunteer opportunities on Oct. 23.
Students of any college campus in the D.C. Student Alliance can register online or just show up on the day of the event to volunteer.
“All the students participating in the service day will wear a shirt that will represent their campus for diverse representation and collaboration,” MacCracken said. “There is a Facebook event for Students Serve, and any student can go from any campus and pick which service site they want to go to. We want to avoid having AU kids just being at AU and Howard kids just being at Howard.”
Service, advocacy and building relationships with D.C. city council members are current and upcoming initiatives by the D.C. Student Alliance to act as a cohesive voice by representing the different campus voices through the D.C. government.
Last year, the organization worked with the Mayor’s Office to help count students in the area for the census.
“The basic idea is that D.C. is a college town, but no one knows it. Students within D.C.’s boundaries represent 1/6 of the population, yet we never think of D.C. as a student-oriented city. We want to change that,” MacCracken said in an e-mail.
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