Aiming higher
As a student qualified to receive the AIMS scholarship, I wholeheartedly support making it more difficult to obtain. I honestly don’t feel that I did enough as a high-school student to earn it. What I absolutely do not support, however, is cutting the award to $3,000 per year. With a skyrocketing cost of attendance and the looming possibility of tuition surcharges, in-state students need all of the help they can get.
Joel Sideman argued that requiring students to “exceed” the AIMS test on their first try “would contradict the idea of encouraging them to take the test a second or third time to improve.” I can’t help but wonder: Doesn’t the policy of allowing numerous re-takes contradict the original goal of the scholarship, which was to reward high-achieving students and encourage them to stay in-state?
Retaking a test multiple times doesn’t show that you are a high-achiever who will succeed in college; it shows that you’ve finally grasped what the scorers are looking for.
ABOR ought to limit AIMS scholarships to students who exceed on their first try and leave the monetary value as is. Doing so would provide adequate financial aid to students who truly deserve it.
Briana Davis
Undergraduate
More to it
(In response to Tye Rabens’ Friday column, “Canceled class result of adviser teaching policy”)
It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the reason for canceling the Transgender and Intersex Literature class had more to do with the subject matter of the course than the fact that Elizabeth McNeil is an academic adviser. I suspect some ultraconservative person discovered a loop hole in the policy or, more likely, invented a new policy and used it to get this class canceled. I smell a rat — a religious, right-wing rat.
McNeil also teaches a career class for English majors, which has been extremely valuable and has done so much to ensure career success for hundreds of students over the years. She is an amazing person who is perfectly capable of teaching while providing excellent academic advice to all her students.
If it is discovered that the adviser-teaching policy has been altered or created for the sole purpose of canceling the class, more of us need to express our outrage. I’ll be looking for a follow-up story by Tye Rabens.
Doug DeVoe
Staff