Social citizen..or not?

When reading the “Social Citizens” article, I got the feeling that Fines was generalizing our generation as the ones who volunteer. I do agree with this to some extent, but I feel as if a lot of people get a false sense of why many kids and students our age do so much charity work and help out around our communities. I might also be stereotyping when I say this, but kids these days aren’t dumb.
We are told as juniors and seniors in high school to volunteer because it “looks good on college applications.” In my honest opinion I do feel as if that is why our generation is prone to this branding of people who volunteer. I’m not saying that all kids our age fall into this category, but I would say many. I feel this way especially because a vast majority of kids these days are going to college, compared to the times when a college education wasn’t as important as it is now.
What also interested me was Nina Rappaport’s story. I felt like she felt into the category of students that really did volunteer because she wanted to feel selfless, not just because she was forced or felt like she had to. As I kept reading, I was shocked to find out that she wasn’t registered to vote. She explains in the piece that “The system is so corrupt my vote isn’t going to change it, nothing is going to ever change politically.” Although she has a point with the system being corrupt, I don’t see how she can use that as an explanation not to register herself to vote. It made me sort of uncomfortable to read this. Just because you think your vote will not count, doesn’t mean that you cant make a difference. This point in the article really bothered me.
Overall I thought the piece was interesting, but didn’t really capture the other aspects of college students today. I feel like all I kept reading was about volunteering and charity. It was a bit repetitive. We students have a lot more to offer.