Serving Ourselves: How the Discourse on Community Engagement Privileges the University over the Community by Kathleen Bortolin

This article was interesting in many ways. I had never before thought that service learning could be a way to glorify the Universities instead of the communities. I think that may be due to the fact that our class in particular has been very much aware that we are here to serve the community of the Robert Weaver neighborhood. The more shocking part of this article though was all of the excerpts from previous articles that prove there are many service learning programs that are truly more about the students and the universities over the communities.
In particular, I thought this quote was ridiculous:

"To increase community partner commitment to projects, local community goals must align with the goal of the initiative (Poindexter, Arnold, & Ostenhout, 2009, p. 65). "

This basically says "We will go out and help communities only if they need the kind of help we want to give." This is completely not the point of service. Serving someone means letting them tell you what they need and how you can help and going it no matter what. Being a servant doesn't mean you do something for someone if its convenient and you want to do it.

Overall I thought it was an interesting article and I agree that it is important to call attention to this issue in Service learning. We must be able to hold each other accountable to the true meaning of service.