Students will no longer be required to complete community service with at least three other Harvard-Westlake students, but the service requirement has been doubled to 12 hours. These changes are due to a new community service policy that will go into effect in the upcoming school year.

“We feel that the new requirement will give students more flexibility and allow them to make their service more personal,” Head of Upper School Audrius Barzdukas said in an email to parents March 1.

“Demonstrating compassion for, and commitment to, the community beyond Harvard-Westlake is an important part of our school experience.”

The Community Council, with Director of Student Affairs Jordan Church and Chaplain Father J. Young, voted to double the number of hours required while allowing students to complete the hours alone.

“We should be rewarding individual hours as well since our purpose is to get people inspired by community service and really want to give back,” said Community Council head Emily Plotkin ’13. “[The increase in number of hours] is in hopes of inspiring more people towards doing more than one event, and hopefully from there they will want to continue it.”

The policy still requires tudents to directly interact with the person they are serving.