Another Disappointment (Vol. 2, Issue 1)

The appointment of a faculty committee admissions and scholarships was hailed by the student body as a great stride towards the correction of the haphazard and arbitrary manner with which scholarships had hitherto been distributed. It was thought that the faculty committee would make public a list of specific requirements for scholarships as well as of the general criteria. governing their allotment. Some even went so far as to hope that this committee would pass upon the individual applications presented by the students. 

Instead, the committee merely drew up a set of general rules to be followed by the administration, such as the percentage of students to receive full scholarships, the percentage to receive half scholarships etc. The applications of students requesting scholarships were not even considered by the committee. They were referred back to the regular administrative channels. 

As a result, this year again, students were in complete ignorance of the.status of their candidacies for scholarships. The student filed his application with the attitude of one hoping for a “good break.” Perhaps by some strange chance the scholarship might be awarded.

These abuses are a direct result of the present system of awards. So long as the award of scholarships is just a routine administrative matter to be attended to in the same manner that one sends away a record transcript, abuses will always occur. So long as one or two men, upon whose shoulders the burden of directing the college rests, must within a few minutes accept or reject more than a hundred applications, the allotment of scholarships will always be haphazard.

There is no excuse for the occurrence of this situation in the future, especially since the proper agency for handling scholarships already exists. There is no reason why in the future the committee on admissions and scholarships should not publish a set of explicit requirements for scholarships, and also pass upon each individual application filed with it. 

The students have every right to demand that this be done. We sincerely trust that the members of the committee will recognize the justice of this demand.