This mandatory service issue was an old Kennedy policy that they attempted to make into state law in Maryland in 1992.
The mandatory aspect is precisely why many people object to the regulation. Edwina L. Green, president of the Maryland Congress of Parents and Teachers, said it would be an imposition on working-class students who had jobs, on students involved in trying to get academic or sports scholarships to college, on students who were single parents, and on students who live in rural areas where there might be a scarcity of volunteer opportunities.
And the Maryland State Teachers Association calls the requirement unconstitutional, both as a forced imposition of values that violates the First Amendment and as involuntary servitude that violates the 13th Amendment.
Service Rule Stirs Debate in Maryland http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CEEDA113CF93AA15754C0A964958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
"He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation and that you move out of your comfort zone. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage."
"Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual – uninvolved, uninformed – you have to stay at the seat at the table of democracy with a man like Barack Obama not just on Tuesday but in a year from now, in four years from now, in eights years from now, you will have to be engaged.”- Michelle Obama at UCLA