Mara Gordon | A ride on the 'fun bus'

It was sort of an urban safari.

They were young professionals, clad in business casual, intrepid explorers of Philadelphia's concrete jungle. They sipped champagne as they boarded the bus, ready for an adventure into uncharted territory.

"With drinks in their hands," the driver chuckled, "I gotta be careful with the brakes."

It was a fundraiser last week for the Mural Arts Program, a local nonprofit that helps put up colorful murals around the city. MAP is one of Philadelphia's most successful community organizations - it has produced over 2,700 murals that brighten up low-income neighborhoods and gets local students involved in the projects.

Murals are a great tool for getting people to work with each other on neighborhood-beautification projects. This is something the Mural Arts Project prides itself on - bringing people together not only for public art, but to revitalize low-income neighborhoods.

So the fundraiser should have been a good thing.

But it exemplified exactly how our generation gets community development all wrong.

It was billed as a happy-hour tour of the city's murals, designed to attract "young advocates for the mural arts." I got to tag along as a reporter, but everyone else gave $25 to benefit the program.

Most wore stilettos and suits, but a few artsy types showed up in designer jeans instead. They nursed plastic cups of champagne on the street in Old City before the tour began, flirting and schmoozing.

It wasn't so different from a million other fundraisers - until the trolley ride actually started.

As we got ready to drive off, one woman grabbed an entire bottle out of the case, shouting, "This is the fun bus!"

But is Philadelphia's urban poverty really that fun?

I wanted to ask someone typing away on her BlackBerry if she had ever gotten covered with paint working on a mural herself, or if one guy in an nice suit had ever talked to one of the low-income high-school students he so enthusiastically supported.

I'm not trying to be a killjoy. The people on the tour were easy to make fun of, but I realized I go to plenty of similar events right here on campus.

I've been to concerts to raise money for AIDS research and sorority parties for domestic violence. Big parties are always easier to justify when the proceeds go to charity.

The irony of getting drunk for a good cause doesn't escape anyone, but it's also true that philanthropic events can be very successful in effecting change.

"I think you need funding to promote change, and you need dedicated people to promote change," College senior Laura Paine told me.

Paine is the chairwoman of the Civic House Associates Coalition, an umbrella organization for service groups on campus. "In all honesty, people are busy," she continued.

People are busy.

But if we can squeeze in some time between all those fundraisers to get to know some of the people we're supposedly helping, it will make a world of difference.

The problem with the mural tour and hundreds of other philanthropic events that happen at Penn is that they let us observe inequality from a safe, comfortable distance.

Service work, on the other hand, forces us to see issues of social justice from a personal perspective.

It won't save the world. But if students volunteer for causes they care about, those causes stay with them forever.

Instead of giving a few small self-congratulatory donations, students understand the issue inside and out.

Granted, it may be true that funds raised at those concerts and parties will make a more substantive impact than an hour of tutoring or mural painting.

But when students are in the financial position to make substantial donations later in life, they will make social justice a top priority, rather than an occasional exercise in soothing liberal guilt.

It's true: A big gift to MAP would probably help put up more murals around the city.

But if we volunteer, we can truly understand why that mural might make Philadelphia a better place.

Mara Gordon is a College senior from Washington, D.C. Her e-mail is gordon@dailypennsylvanian.com. Flash Gordon appears on Thursdays.

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