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The University of Idaho is boosting its reputation this academic year with some big awards. The National Medal of the Arts was awarded to the Lionel Hampton International Jazz Festival and now the university has received the 2007 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll from the Corperation for National and Community Service. This is the highest award a university can receive for its service activities.
For all of the bad reputation university students seems to get from the community, like the recent noise ordinance and boarding house ordinance, UI seems to be making a name for itself nationally.
Students and faculty are giving back to those who have less through Alternative Spring and Winter Breaks, Greek philanthropies, service learning programs and a variety of other service activities.
In fact, every time you turn around you run into a service organization doing something. Whether it is an awareness week, a documentary festival or a Nearly Naked Dash, there is something for everyone to get involved in.
Members of the UI campus have some positive things to pat themselves on the back for. This is what being a part of this university is all about, not about parties or making our neighboring Moscow residents angry, but doing service for others.
There are even efforts on campus to better reputations within the university community. The ATO fraternity is in the process of changing their reputation and one of the ways they want to improve is to participate more in philanthropies.
Good reputations like this take upkeep. Like the ATOs, we need to be thinking about our image within the community and working to better it every day.
This doesn’t mean we won’t continue to face adversity. No school, community or family is without its problems. How we react to those problems is more indicative of our attitude than the problems themselves.
Ignoring problems does not make them go away. Facing up to them, like ATO is doing now, is the way to make our community a better place to live and the best way to attract a higher class of future students.
The work doesn’t and won’t stop with the awards, UI needs to think about their long tradition of service and keep building on it.
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