Within the next couple days, students will be deserting Kent State’s campus as they prepare to move forward with their spring break.

Many of us will be going someplace warm (read: not Northeast Ohio), traveling to places like Florida, Texas or the Caribbean to catch some rays and relaxation on vacation before returning to Kent for the remainder of spring semester. Others will be heading to their hometowns to snooze until noon while they still can. Still more will work, hoping to gain some extra money.

Meanwhile, some Kent State students will be spending their spring breaks on service trips sponsored by the university.

Kent State has held an annual service trip every spring break since 2006 to help rebuild flood damage in Katrina-ravaged Mississippi. And other university groups will be performing community service in Buffalo, N.Y., Appalachia, W.Va., Washington, D.C. and Columbiana County, among other places.

These students should be applauded for giving up their spring break for service. It can’t be easy to give up a week off, especially when it’s in the middle of 15 weeks of classes, exams and papers. To spend that week off doing service for others is laudable.

We’d also like to encourage others to help someone out during their spring breaks.

No, it’s not required. And we know it probably makes us sound like your mother when we ask you to do things like that. Sorry — we can’t help it sometimes. We just think community service is important.

Unfortunately, a lot of times we just don’t have the time to help out in our communities. Getting a week off gives us the opportunity, and it’s good that some people are taking that opportunity to help others.

To help others, you don’t have to spend your whole week doing a huge-scale community service project. It doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, a lot of the most overlooked service projects are the smaller ones.

So go out and clean up the roads around your house if you go back to your hometown. Or pick up all those beer cans on that white sandy beach you’re spending a week on — it’ll make those parties at night better anyway.

Or you could still donate money to earthquake relief in Haiti and Chile. The earthquakes may have happened weeks ago (or, in Haiti’s case, months), but money is still needed to rebuild the countries. If you have an extra 10 bucks, why not spend it on that?

Spring break gives us all a chance for a week off. We’d just like to see more people do at least one good deed during that week and fewer bad ones.

The above editorial is the consensus opinion of the Daily Kent Stater editorial board.