 |
"No, I didn't really care. We were giving out pamphlets on the street and explaining the dangers of drugs, but I was doing it only for the hours. It's not like it mattered anyways; some of the volunteers just went off to play and still got hours for 'volunteering,'" said a high school student who wished to remain anonymous.
Since 1995, when the Seoul City government decided to include volunteering in the evaluation of students admitted to high schools, volunteering has grown year after year. And now, with the introduction of College Admissions Officers, volunteering is about to jump.
"When American colleges evaluate students, they look at their volunteering records. But the question is what they are looking for," said Kim Myung-soo, a college counselor at Hanyoung Foreign Language High School. "Colleges look for a student's leadership skills and social participation, and they prioritize this over how many hours the student performed. This is one of the key differences between Korean and American schools in admissions."
However, there have been unforeseen consequences with this method. "I was at a leadership camp for about three days. All we did was listen to lectures, and in the end they gave me 24 hours of volunteer work, although I don't recall doing any work at all." said a high school student. "I just turned the form into the school and that was the end of it."
Now, with admissions officers at many schools, Korean students are striving to do more volunteer work. Nonetheless, they seem to be going in the wrong direction. "I was on a school fieldtrip, and on the final day we decided to do some volunteering. We had overestimated our trip fee and had about 40,000 won left over. We went to an elders' protection center and volunteered, assisting them in bathing and cleaning up the place. We did that for about an hour or two and donated the leftover money. I got a certificate saying I did 20 hours of work." said another student who wished to remain anonymous.
"It is very difficult," said an official at the Seoul Youth Service Center. "We have about 120 organizations affiliated with us, offering students volunteer work. We request them to fairly account for hours; however, we cannot go over every single one of them to ensure they were done properly. In addition, we have no jurisdiction over organizations that are not related to us."
Volunteering is not a legal matter. There is no law forcing it, nor are there laws punishing unfair distribution of hours. There are only small regulations decided by respected local governments.
"It's up to the organizations and the schools. The organizations confirm the work done and, if requested, give a certificate. Then, the teachers also confirm that the content is true. The problem is that this double check system does not always work." said an official. "We have an online system to filter out dirty cases, but not all the students use that system. Even if students forge documents and hand them in, we would have a method of verifying them."
Furthermore, universities in Korea also do not have a method to assure the legitimacy of volunteer work done.
"In regular admissions, we look only to see if the student did twenty hours of volunteering," said an official at Chung-Ang University. "But admissions officers look at the content as well as the hours completed. Here, we have no method of confirming whether the content or the hours are authentic. Last year, we received about a thousand applicants, and we couldn't call every single organization to make sure that the numbers were true."
Every day, more and more students are volunteering, or claiming that they did. It is very probable that some students may take advantage of the current system for their admissions to college. Measures must be taken to ensure that students don't receive credit for work they did not do. If not, colleges will be spending time looking at fabricated efforts.
hyunguboy1@naver.com
Kang Hyun-gu is a sophomore who attends Hanyoung Foreign Language High School in Seoul.
