Alexandra Tashman: Stuart House shows service ideals can be met with little expense

Sometimes, the cost of serving the community is just 19 valet parking spots.

Last week, the University of California Board of Regents approved design plans and a land grant for the relocation of Stuart House, an extension of the Rape Treatment Center at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center that offers free 24-hour medical, psychological and legal services to children who have been sexually abused. The subject land is currently used as valet parking for the hospital.

The funding for the new facility, which is being built because Stuart House sees nearly double the number of children the program’s current location was meant to accommodate, comes entirely from The Rape Foundation, the non-profit organization that oversees the facility.

Seeking out mutually beneficial community partnerships such as this is an effective way for UCLA to serve and improve the community it inhabits, even during hard economic times.

Granting this land allows UCLA to live up to its founding mission without much direct financial burden being placed on the university. It also executes one of the three primary tenets of the UC’s mission statement – public service.

UCLA has a lot more to offer than just straight cash. Land and expertise are commodities that we can use to forge bonds with surrounding communities at a small direct cost to the university. For example, UCLA owns a wide variety of properties, including a large number of single family homes and parking lots that could be put toward community-oriented projects.

UCLA also has much to offer in terms of volunteer expertise.

This expertise is apparent in our involvement with programs such as the Mobile Clinic Project at UCLA, which provides medical checkups and care to the homeless individuals in West Hollywood and Santa Monica using the combined efforts of undergraduate, graduate, medical and law students. Involvement with this organization comes at a low cost to the university because the program is financed mostly through grants.

The group, which is well-established and successful within the greater-Los Angeles area, provides UCLA with a means of serving others without having to directly expend any money.

Meanwhile, by offering these non-cash resources, UCLA is seen as a community-oriented and generous university by association. Moreover, students and faculty who are involved gain valuable hands-on volunteer experience .

Stuart House is an ideal example of this type of exchange. The program’s innovative model for how to appropriately respond to children who have been sexually abused was one of the first in the nation, and has since been used as an ideal guide at centers around the country. UCLA is regarded as a leader in this field simply by proximity.

UCLA can continue its commitment to service and find new ways to give back to our community without having to directly spend cash that could otherwise be diverted toward students and staff.

We have as much of a responsibility as Bruins to better ourselves through education as we do serving our community. Projects like Stuart House that integrate UCLA with its surrounding community accomplish both goals at once.