We reported in Wednesday’s Post that Ohio University’s Urban Scholars Program — which at its conception planned to recruit 100 high-achieving students annually from Ohio’s low income, urban areas — only consists of four total students this year.
The figures are somewhat staggering, considering President Roderick McDavis’ longstanding commitment to diversity on this campus. He and his wife, Deborah, have helped fund the Urban Scholars Program, and ethnic diversity has increased since McDavis’ presidency began in 2004.
The President’s Office cited changing economic factors as reasons why its goal for the program was not achieved in the past 10 years, but it wasn’t an answer the office was quick to give.
When a Post reporter asked the President’s Office yesterday to clarify whether the university wanted to accept 100 Urban Scholars with each incoming class or to have 100 Urban Scholars on campus among four graduating classes, McDavis’ chief of staff responded that McDavis’ original goal of 100 Urban Scholars was a typo in the university news releases where the Post reporter found the president’s intentions transcribed from his inaugural speech.
“The goal was always intended to be 10 Urban Scholars per year for a maximum of 40 Urban Scholars on campus at any one time when it would be fully funded,” Jennifer Kirksey, the chief of staff, wrote in an email to a reporter.
Kirksey sent a slightly different message to the Post reporter once she was provided links to national media outlets and university news releases also stating OU’s eventual plan to recruit 100 Urban Scholars.
“We would be pleased to achieve 100 Urban Scholars but 40 total is a more realistic goal in our current economic realities,” she wrote.
The program is valuable to this university. Take it from this year’s Urban Scholar, Jalen Perkins.
The freshman from Columbus told The Post that she wouldn’t have been able to finance a college education without the university’s financial assistance.
That, in itself, shows the worth of the program. Of course, we’re not suggesting that the four current Urban Scholars is too few a number overall; it’s better than none, and we’re sure each of the four students is grateful and deserving.
The regression in program size, however, has left it as a shell of what it could have been — and what it was intended to be.
Regardless, the President’s Office should have been more transparent in disclosing its original goals for the scholarship program.
Editorials represent the majority of The Post’s executive editors.
