Kudos to the student volunteers who care enough about their community to try to make a difference in it. Specifically, we're talking about the nearly 1,000 student volunteers who showed up to Gainesville's "Homeless Night Out and Service Fair" last week.
Sure, we may be opposed to a UF-funded homeless shelter, but we have nothing against anyone volunteering to help out the homeless people. We even encourage it. We're proud of the Greek community, which held a donation competition last month to collect toiletries and other essentials for the homeless.
And UF groups such as the Gator Homeless Coalition continue giving to the homeless in the form of a weekly dinner on the Downtown Plaza.
All this giving is what makes our student body so great. Tons of students volunteer every semester at Shands at UF. Students are one of the biggest groups of donors for LifeSouth Community Blood Centers. We volunteer for political campaigns because we think we can make a difference.
Hopefully, the habits we form in college - giving our time and money (and blood) to worthy causes - will stay with us for a lifetime. We bet the people you're helping out won't forget it.
