AmeriCorps: How a season of service can pay off years of school loans

Black Collegian, Oct 1994 by Chapelle, Tony

When Hugh Bailey was a student at North Carolina A&T State University seven years ago, he was shocked that students and faculty weren't interested in the local African-American community. That lack of interest struck him as strange. But he didn't buy into the "town-and-gown syndrome" of the college enclave that isolated itself from the problems of the Greensboro townfolk.

First, Bailey became a Big Brother. He says, "I wanted to get involved because a lot of young African-American males needed Black role models. So for two years, I worked with a group of elementary school kids who lived near the college. One seven-year-old in particular, named Chris, was actually surprised that I was even in college. I guess he didn't think that Black men went to college.

"We went to baseball, basketball, and football games on campus, and I brought him to the dorm. He saw a lot of things that he probably never thought were possible for people from his neighborhood. On the other hand, I realized there's always an opportunity to give back."

And Bailey had his political side, too. When Charlotte's former mayor, Harvey Gantt, an African American, challenged arch-conservative Jesse Helms for the state's U.S. Senate seat, Hugh and a group of fellow students even commandeered a school bus to escort Greensboro residents to the voting places.

Now that he's graduated, at 25 Bailey is still pressing collegians to get involved. But these days, he offers service-minded individuals more than a promise that they'll help the less fortunate. He's a senior program officer of President Bill Clinton's new AmeriCorps program, which will be a kind of Peace Corps in the community. Bailey is setting up AmeriCorps on campuses at Black, Hispanic, and tribal colleges.

Total compensation comes to nearly $12,000 for a year's worth of service.

The government needs 20,000 people between 17 and 25 to apply for full-time jobs ranging from fixing up dilipadated houses and helping teachers in elementary school classes to comforting AIDS patients. AmeriCorps will pay full-time participants minimum wage, provide health and child care if necessary, plus pay off what amounts to an average undergraduate's school debts. In exchange for 1700 hours of service, AmeriCorps will hand young people an average stipend of $7,640--roughly minimum wage depending upon the county and state. Once they complete that nine-to 12-month hitch, AmeriCorps will arrange to knock $4725 off their student loan bill. That comes to a total compensation of nearly $12,000. Participants may also work part-time; 900 hours across two to three years. For participants working part-time, AmeriCorps wipes away $2362 of their school tab.

"Based on the letters and reaction the President has gotten when he's gone around the country, there are literally millions of young people waiting to get involved," says Rick Allen, the deputy assistant to the President for national service.

"One of the critical factors for deciding is: Do you want to make a difference? If not, don't apply.

"But in the real world, the more mercenary reason [to join] is that the AmeriCorps program can help you to pay off student loans without you working for free."

The purpose of AmeriCorps, as Bailey and Allen articulate it, is "to get things done." The phrase sprang from President Clinton's 1993 inaugural address in which he challenged "a new generation of young Americans to a season of service," as he put it. "There is much to be done--enough, indeed, for millions of others who are still young in spirit to give of themselves in service, too."

The rallying cry, "Getting things done," epitomizes the state-of-the-art kind of action voluntarism at the heart of a whole new agency called the Corporation for National and Community Service. The corporation becomes the umbrella organization over several older agencies: Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), Learn and Serve America, the National Senior Service Corps, plus two new programs, AmeriCorps and a new Civilian Community Corps.

Depending on where you joined, you could find yourself being a teacher's aide in a school, or testing in apartment buildings for poisonous lead paint.

Even down to a name similar to that of President Kennedy's Peace Corps, Clinton's AmeriCorps reflects his admiration of John Kennedy. In 1961, Kennedy mounted an American army of college graduates who fanned throughout the developing nations and used their teaching, engineering, or other skills to improve agricultural practices and the lives of people.

Since then, various presidents have shown a motley degree of interest in drawing out the Good Samaritan impulse in Americans. Lyndon Johnson continued the Kennedy initiatives, for instance, by endorsing VISTA in 1964. But in recent years Ronald Reagan did almost no cheerleading for citizens to serve in public projects, while George Bush gave out lots of awards to people he named "the Thousand Points of Light" and $73 million to the Commission on National and Community Service. Hugh Bailey says the Bush Administration laid the groundwork for the current success of the President's national service programs.