St. Olaf Community Service

 St. Olaf has a long tradition of community engagement and service. Drawing on your experiences and aspirations, design a project that could benefit a community on or off campus. (500 word maximum)

Pompeii and Herculaneum wore the ghastly blanket of antipathetic gloom dearly woven by the cataclysmic eruptions of Vesuvius. Neville Goddard says that the world is a reflection of man's own consciousness. Extrapolating the analogy we may infer that the catastrophe is but a reflection of the perturbed, forsaken, exploited and tortured mother earth's consciousness manifested in the material world. Saints and seers, doctors and psychiatrist, though travelling on diverse paths have come to a conclusion that green-house effect, global warming, pollution... - God forbid should I utter any more of such illicit monsters - have stained the earth!

The number of ways in which 'sin theta' can be expressed are equivalent to the number of ways in which Global warming can be abated. Not venturing out of the scope of my project, I would confine my discussion to the 3 famous R's - reduce, reuse, recycle. 

For all these centuries we have been bulldozing forests to serve our needs. The source of knowledge - books - is made from the 'papyrus'. Schools across the world comprise of millions of students who in turn get 'almost the same' 10-12 books a year with each book having at least 100 pages. The total number of pages required sum up to billions! However with the completion of each academic year we have the nerve to shred them to pieces, cast them off, or somehow humiliate them! 

All students would require ‘at least’ 500-600 sheets or a few notebooks (for projects, assignments, circulars etc.) during an academic year. If all such papers are counted the number would be unimaginably huge! Just because of our hideousness, innumerable papers fly all around our schools. We may be active or passive contributors but that is not the point. There are many ‘inquisitive intellects’ lurking to grab an opportunity, whenever it presents itself. They become the ‘Wright Brothers’ and air their puny paper planes! Misfortune befalls the society by the slightest disgrace done by even a single man!

'Practically' our material including textbooks is not important to us after the academic year is over at which time we can collect all the superfluous papers and books - the material that we no longer require. This collection can serve the up-coming batches and cater to the needs of the under-privileged. The scrap material incapable of being used by others can be sent for recycling.

All the 'scrap' and the 'non-scrap' must be hoarded at the respective schools or colleges. The useful materials should be sorted out and sent to the school/local library so that it can be reused while the futile should be recycled. 

It is said that Butterfly Effect may be the basis of meteorology but augmenting to the statement I assert that our thoughts, actions and the results thereof too find their roots in Butter Effect! Let us all unite to become responsible and a response-able citizens.