Recently, there has been some uncertainty about possible changes being made to the Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship.
“Director Molly Pierson told me that there’s a committee for the scholarship,” Student Government Association President Michael Harriss said. “They’re talking about making changes, but no changes have been made yet.”
The MLK scholarship is an award given to students whom the University believes will promote diversity at Saint Louis University and exhibit leadership on campus. The scholarship annually gives $13,000 to 150 students. In recent days, however, there have been rumors that the scholarship will be decreased by $10,000, and will only be offered to 50 students in the 2010-2011 academic year. No such change has been made.
“There’s been some confusion,” Tim Hercules, assistant director of Counseling and Outreach at Student Financial Services, said. “No student will receive less than $13,000, and we will not see a decrease.”
Students expressed some concern about what a change to the MLK scholarship would mean for the promotion of diversity at Saint Louis University.
“I am a proud MLK scholar and I [was] very upset to hear that it may be cut next year,” freshman Briana Wright said at Feb. 10’s Diversity Roundtable. “[My fellow MLK scholars and I] always talk about how we feel that SLU did us a disservice by naming this scholarship the MLK scholarship, which means that they promote diversity here. Once I got here, it was a huge reality check that there isn’t much diversity here. I just feel very disappointed in SLU when the scholarship gets stripped in its meaning.”
In this week’s SGA meeting, Harris assured the student body that the rumors were not true and that the integrity of the scholarship was not being tampered with.
“This is not affecting current scholarship recipients, and the reduction from $13,000 to $3,000 is not true,” Harris said. “The package may look different, but students will still receive the same amount of scholarship.”
Harris mentioned that the Assistant Vice Provost of the Division of Enrollment Management and Director of Student Financial Services Cari Wickliffe would be attending the SGA meeting the following week to clear up any misconceptions on the matter.
As of right now, no changes have been made, Harriss said.
