Princeton University is an extraordinary school that I am blessed to attend. Yet, my admiration for the institution and its legendary motto makes its superficial approach to community service all the more disappointing. For a school with a $36 billion endowment and the professed academic mission of producing scholars “in the Nation’s service,” I expected community service during freshman orientation to be executed with far greater competence and have a larger impact than it did.
Princeton’s institutional ethos rests on one foundational slogan: “In the Nation’s Service and the Service of Humanity.” Former Princeton President Woodrow Wilson inspired this phrase, and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor later revised it, establishing it as the moral lodestar of the university. This slogan does well to legitimize the University beyond its reputation for academic excellence. Princeton doesn’t just produce scholars, but leaders of character who will serve the nation and the world. Plastered hastily on everything from couch pillows to CommonApp questions, Princeton embraces this institutional motto as the articulation of its highest ideal. Indeed, my own decision to attend the school was due to its avowed commitment to service.
Naturally, I eagerly anticipated my participation in Princeton’s Community Action (CA) before arriving on campus. As one of the university’s three orientation programs, CA is designed to introduce new students to service organizations in Mercer County and, in principle, motivate them to continue community service during the remainder of their Princeton careers. To my dismay, however, I found that virtue signaling and political correctness took precedence over genuine community service.
To be clear, CA was not entirely disappointing. We handed out food, packed meals, and tended a community garden–hands-on work in underprivileged communities that gave us a sense of purpose. Following these interactions, my fellow students and I spoke about how meaningful we found it to make a difference in others’ lives and how we wanted to volunteer in the future. This volunteer work was proof that Princeton can offer students formative, service-driven experiences. Yet it was abruptly cut short when we re-entered the ‘Orange Bubble.’ From then on, Princeton’s CA fell into an underwhelming, bureaucratic lull.
After a few hours of concrete community service, we spent the next 10 hours wading through a sea of dense red tape and generic university training. We sat through countless politically correct and dull lectures. These presentations intended to educate Princeton students about the unique challenges that the homeless face, but they came across as patronizing lectures that replaced complex ideas with elementary ideology. I remember spending a great deal of time listening to a frivolous debate about what terminology we should use to describe the less fortunate in our society—are they ‘homeless’ or ‘unhoused’? Political buzzwords, including ‘feminism,’ ‘wealth gap,’ and ‘structural inequality,’ dominated our Q&A section. It was astonishing to see how apathetic my fellow classmates and I became to the subject matter at hand, when we had been serving others enthusiastically only hours earlier. Community service had been replaced by morally righteous monologuing, scrolling social media, and catching up on sleep among students.
Fundamentally, my frustration with Princeton’s CA program followed from its conceptual approach to community service. When I was working in the Mercer community, my actions felt meaningful and tangible. I was directly helping the community, rather than merely speaking about doing so. That is not to discredit the value of open discussion and classroom learning—these are both important parts of the Princeton experience. Yet they are not the most effective way to learn about community service. Do mathematical proofs and community service require the same kind of instruction? No. For certain activities, practical action offers students the deepest form of learning.
In hindsight, I wish that I could have contributed more, as there was evidently more to be contributed. On October 27th, Princeton’s administration announced that it would eliminate small-group orientation experiences, including CA. On November 9th, it paused the decision due to student and alumni backlash. The administration’s rationale for initially moving to terminate these orientation groups was not their perceived ineffectiveness or shifting institutional goals. Rather, budgetary considerations prompted the change. Yet exposing students to community service and advancing Princeton’s mission to serve the nation is more important than marginal financial gains. Princeton should retain Community Action, while changing the program so that its participants spend less time in the classroom, and more time outside in service of our surrounding community.
Image Credit – Wikimedia Commons
Copyright © 2026 The Princeton Tory. All rights reserved.