Needy Taylor Hall students get grants

Since the beginning of the January semester, Sasheen Harding has been burdened with the stress of not paying a small portion of her fees at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona campus.

The second-year applied chemistry major and psychology minor, who hails from Montego Bay, St James, like many other students at the institution, said she was studying in trepidation for her final exams, not certain she would be able to sit her finals because of her inability to find some $30,000.

"I have just been studying and praying, hoping that I would be able to do the exams because, to tell you the truth, I had no idea where I would have found the money to pay off the outstanding balance," Harding told the Gleaner.

She said her only glimmer of hope to completing her second year at the university came when she heard about a special scholarship being offered by the Taylor Hall Alumni Association and the Taylor Hall Scholarship and Student Welfare Endowment Fund.

A resident of Taylor Hall on the campus, Harding said she immediately saw this as the answer to her prayers and quickly jumped at the opportunity to apply for the scholarship.

Last Friday, Harding was one of 35 Taylorites who were given a chance to complete their exams this semester through a grant valued at some CAD$20,000, which was provided by the Mary HoFatt and Gladys Myers Educational Fund.

George Campbell, a member of the hall's alumni, who made the presentation on the behalf of Winston HoFatt, the past student who donated the funds, said that there is a need for greater partnership between the UWI past students and the institution to help those in need.

"The University's administration recognises the need, but their hands are also tied. So it has to be a collaborative effort between the wider alumni to see what can be done to help some of these students," Campbell expressed.

For the past few years, the UWI has instituted a policy to bar students from sitting exams if they have outstanding balances on school fees or hall fees of $30,000 or more.

University protests

In April 2012, for instance, protest erupted on the campus when some 1,600 students were told that they were not going to be allowed to sit their final exams because of the outstanding sums.

Athol Hamilton, student services and development manager at Taylor Hall, said the problem becomes even more acute, as when students are barred from their exams, this negatively impacts on the grade point average (GPA).

"One of the things we found out is that some of the students would not qualify for scholarships, not because they are failing, but because they had been previously barred from doing exams and this brings down their GPA. Therefore, they may not qualify for some scholarships," Hamilton said.

As a result, he said in choosing the 35 recipients for the grants, they had to look beyond academic performance and focus on students who demonstrated the most need and how rounded they were.

For Harding, she could not stop expressing gratitude to those persons who enabled her to finish her semester and has vowed "to pass on the blessing when I leave university and get my chance to do help someone else like this".