Dickinson College will no longer offer full-ride scholarships to Posse Foundation scholars from New York starting in 2020.

“The college is excited to welcome two new Posses to Dickinson in the fall of 2018, from Los Angeles and New York.  Beginning with the fall of 2019, the college will [only] welcome 12 Posse scholars from Los Angeles annually,” explained Brontè Burleigh-Jones, vice president of finance and administration.

Currently, the college recruits 10 students from both New York and Los Angeles through the Posse Foundation and has 77 Posse Scholars enrolled in total. While recruitment for New York Posse scholars will discontinue, the college plans to increase the number of Posse scholars from Los Angeles to 12. According to Burleigh-Jones, the money the college will save with the elimination of the scholarships will be used to provide financial aid to domestic students of color outside of the Posse Foundation program.

When asked about his feelings on the New York Posse scholarship being stopped, current New York Posse scholar Ian Genao ’20 explained that “getting rid of the program that brought me here is like getting rid of part of my identity at Dickinson.”

“I feel like my first reaction would be just ‘wow.’ Although it would definitely take time to see how I would react to it, like you just told me, [but Posse] is really a part of me, the moment I describe myself as a Dickinson student I also describe myself as a Posse scholar,” he explained. “I’m a Posse scholar and then everything else comes after that. I feel like it would be getting rid of my identity on campus.”

“We are actually excited about this opportunity to expand our commitment to diversity and inclusion on campus, because as a result of this decision the college will actually be able to increase the number of domestic students of color that we recruit to the campus… and…it would also allow us to hire a new staff person and to provide additional support for our growing population of students of color,” Burleigh-Jones maintained.

“We are talking about going from 20 scholarships to 12, so if you take those [financial aid] dollars from eight full scholarships and you apply that to the average financial aid for domestic students of color that would allow us to recruit… 14.5 domestic students of color so we pick up 6.5 [to] seven additional students annually,” she stated.

President Margee Ensign echoed Burleigh-Jones’ statement.

“While we will not have a New York Posse in the years ahead, we will use the funds from those scholarships to enroll additional students of color. At the same time, we will have the opportunity to expand our efforts to make Dickinson more inclusive by hiring a position to provide additional mentorship and programming for our students of color.”

Burleigh-Jones further maintained that since the elimination of the New York Posse scholarships was voted on Thursday, April 5 in a Planning and Budget (P&B) meeting, “we’ve not gotten to that level of specificity about the program or how we’ll monitor the scholarships. We have to take a final budget back to the Board [of Trustees] in October, so we would have a better idea of what [this new position] looks like between now and the October board meeting.”

According to Joyce Bylander, vice president and dean of student life, the college made the decision to stop awarding scholarships to Posse scholars from New York instead of Los Angeles due to changes in demographics.

“The number of college-going students in the North East and Mid-Atlantic is actually going down, decreasing, and the number of college age students is increasing in the South, in the South West and on the West Coast so it is about the shift in the demographics of the United States.”

Bylander also explained that the college is better known in the New York area, which also constituted to the decision to eliminate future New York scholarships.

“We’ve been [in New York] since 2001. We have a really strong footprint in [New York] in terms of schools and counselors and we are well known there and we are still working to build that same kind of footprint on the West Coast.”

While the final vote was taken within the last month, Burleigh-Jones explained that the college has been exploring the elimination of the scholarships since May 2017.

“We began looking at the Posse program as part of financial review last May. A committee of the board was formed to look at the college’s financial position and to develop a multi-year plan… A campus working group began meeting last May…[and] then we formed a smaller working group that included admissions, institutional research and Dean Bylander that came back to the working group for a full discussion and then ultimately to [P&B] and senior officers for decision and discussion, so this has gone through many bodies.”

Burleigh-Jones also explained that “We have heard student feedback throughout the process as students are members of the campus working group on college finance and P&B. Their voices and feedback were valued and considered as we completed our analysis and made our final recommendations.

Ken Bamba ’20, a New York Posse Scholar, said that “Honestly, I feel like [terminating the New York Posse scholarship]…is understandable…seeing the progression of how the school is going and the direction is going; how the school isn’t making enough profit. We’re not making enough money to keep it going,” he said. “Giving out full-tuition scholarships is incredible, and Posse brings so much to this campus. It brings so much diversity and so much involvement to this campus, but I feel like having those 10 full tuition scholarships, that’s so much money..It’s something that I foresaw, but it’s super sad because I feel like what Posse brings to this campus is irreplaceable.”

Another New York Posse Scholar, Carol Fallada ’18, said that she too “can’t necessarily say that it’s a bad decision, but I can’t really say that I agree with the decision. I think providing an opportunity for underprivileged communities in general to attend [college] is something that I value in general, so while I respect the college’s decision to provide opportunities for domestic students, and allocate the funds to those students, I also am disappointed, or saddened that these opportunities are going to be taken away from New York students,” she said. “I don’t really know how to consolidate those two things because I’m a person of color myself, so who’s to say that a Posse scholar deserves an opportunity to attend Dickinson more than any other domestic student who deserves it equally, but at the same time, I’m sad that people who do achieve Posse now are not going to be able to attend this school.”

She did emphasize, however, that “since they’re just going to accepting 12 Posses from [Los Angeles,] this college had better ensure that they provide the best resources for students who are coming from very vast and different environments from the East Coast.”

Burleigh-Jones did mention that “a lot of thought went into this and…into literally every item that will appear on the list of budget options that we’re pursuing, but this one in particular we spent a lot of time looking at it and once we looked at it more closely we realized there was an opportunity us to leverage those same financial aid dollars to provide support and services to this population of students that is growing and the beautiful thing is that we have had Posse and so we have a successful program so we know what kinds of services and support are beneficial so we’re able to use those dollars to provide those same kinds of services and I’m not talking mirror every service but we understand the kind of framework that make sense…and so this really is an opportunity for us to leverage our resources to better meet the needs of a grow.”

While the decision has been made, Burleigh-Jones stated that there are ongoing discussions regarding the future of the Posse scholarships and the new position that the college is planning on creating.

“There will be meetings this week with the Posse mentors and then with the students who are part of the Posse program. A more general statement will be sent out to Posse alumn[i] as well and then…this will be presented next Tuesday [May 1] as part of our Planning and Budget presentation and then it is included in my report to the Board of Trustees for next Friday [May 4].”

According to its website, the Posse Foundation “identifies public high school students with extraordinary academic and leadership potential who may be overlooked by traditional college selection processes.” While in college the Posse Scholars are placed into “supportive, multicultural teams, Posses…”

Dickinson College started its partnership with the Posse Foundation in 2001. According to Bylander, “for the first four years of our relationship with Posse, we just recruited from New York.” During this time Dickinson was able to “take up to 12 scholars,” she explained. Bylander further explained that the college has an annual contract with the Posse Foundation, which is renewed each year.

The Posse Foundation is a national initiative and has chapters in Atlanta, the Bay Area, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York and Washington D.C., according to its website.

According to Ensign, this move is part of additional measures the college is planning on taking to increase the student body’s diversity.

“While our first year class is our most diverse ever, we still have work to do,” she explained. “This is just a part of expanding our efforts toward diversity and inclusion, and I hope to have more news soon on additional ways we will do that.”

Bylander maintained that current Posse Scholars from New York will not be affected by this change.