Located near the entrance of LM stands the 100 hour wall. The wall displays 169 plaques, each honoring a student for completing over 100 hours of service. The wall was created by LM’s buildOn chapter with the intention of not only commending current and past volunteers but also inspiring future ones. The accompanying sign reads, “This wall is dedicated to Lower Merion High School students who have put forward tremendous efforts in providing our community with service and displaying true compassion for others.” While, in theory, the wall should serve a great purpose, the actual execution of the wall does not accurately reflect the values written on its sign.
The main issue behind the wall is that it fails to account for all students who are involved with volunteering. In fact, the only way that students can actually be on the wall is by volunteering and obtaining the majority of the hours from buildOn. While the club allows students to add hours from separate organizations, the cap is set at 25 hours. Unfortunately, the students who have spent a significant amount of time in other organizations find their efforts to be unappreciated and unrecognized. Ivan Sanchez ’24, who often volunteers his time working with elementary school Science Olympiad competitions, shares, “I know of people who have put in a lot of work volunteering in Science Olympiad events with me and have not gotten the recognition they deserve. The wall should also extend to students involved with various other organizations.” The biased nature behind the wall also extends to the students who are applying to college. Only those who are affiliated with buildOn can list the 100 hour recognition as an award, while students who are not directly involved with buildOn can only list their service as another activity that they have done in high school. This is unfair. By limiting the 100 hour recognition award exclusively to buildOn members, the award diminishes the value of service of students who are not involved in buildOn and discourages participation in other volunteering through LM. This creates a mindset among students throughout the school that buildOn is worthy enough of recognition. Ideally, the 100 hour wall should reflect all “Lower Merion High School students,” but in reality it fails to recognize all students engaged in volunteering.
Another concern with the buildOn wall is the fact that students are incentivized to pursue volunteering primarily for the purpose of obtaining hours and making it onto the wall, rather than focusing on the impact they can make through volunteering. When asked about this, LM’s current buildOn advisor, Megan McDermott, optimistically shared, “While extrinsic rewards can be highly motivating, we hope that our student volunteers are passionate enough about service and connecting meaningfully with others that they eventually don’t need that type of motivation to serve.” On the contrary, this motivator creates a mentality in buildOn and emphasizes hours rather than effort during volunteering. A good amount of the students on the wall have obtained hours through Trek: an annual two week trip where students travel to underdeveloped countries to help build schools. While the objective behind Trek is great, there is much criticism of it. The main criticism is the fact that it is viewed as a way for students to capitalize off of other cultures for personal gain, particularly for amassing service hours. This can lead to doubts regarding the authenticity behind a student’s efforts. Instead of making sure students are contributing to communities in need, the heavy emphasis placed on hours rather than quality creates a transactional approach to volunteering where the goal is to benefit students and not the community.
While the 100 hour wall at LM claims it recognizes the commendable effort of all student volunteers, it lacks truthfulness. The wall’s exclusivity overlooks many student volunteers and fosters a sense of unfairness among students. Moreover, it fails to distinguish between students who have an aspiration to make a positive difference versus those who simply view it as a numbers game. Thus, there is a crucial need to reevaluate the criteria of the wall to ensure it truly reflects the diverse and meaningful contributions of all LM student volunteers.