As scholarship winners celebrate, others work full time to stay enrolled
On Sept. 22, warm sunlight beamed through the windows and comfortable red and blue leather seats in the Dawn Russell Student Lounge, greeting St. Thomas University's (STU) Presidential Scholarship recipients.
More than 100 STU students were invited to the Presidential Scholarship Reception, said Dionne Izzard, director of Advancement at STU. Together, their scholarships and awards total about $2.5 million.
This is “one of my favourite events because it brings the first-year and the upper-year students together. Izzard said. “It gives those first-years faces that they can recognize when they're in the halls, fellow scholarship winners, or know if they need somebody to talk to.”
Izzard loves celebrating STU students in their achievements and accomplishments, saying, “they deserve to be celebrated.”
Rachel Jewett, a first-year student in the Bachelor of Arts, majoring in English and Psychology, was proud to be counted amongst the scholarship winners.
“It’s full tuition over four years minus compulsory fees. It means everything. It honours not only the work that I put into it, but the work that I plan on putting into my school.”
Aurora Sutton, a fourth-year STU student, honouring in human rights and majoring in political science, was beaming and very “proud” of her accomplishments.
For Sutton, winning the four-year renewable full tuition scholarship meant that she did not have to worry about “balancing multiple jobs” with her studies. It gave her the opportunity to pursue extracurricular activities such as moot court.
“We [Sutton and Edyn Clowater, also Presidential Scholarship recipients] were able to be victorious at our first-ever moot undergraduate competition which was huge … I also competed at an international law school meet for human rights, in the United Nations Office, [in] Geneva, Switzerland.”
Jewett empathized with non-scholarship students as they “are at a disadvantage”, because jobs and support are hard to access.
She said that many students struggle with “financial burden.”
“We are all friends here … I think that sucks,” in regard to students not getting a scholarship.
One of those students is Abrielle LeBoeuf, a third-year, first-generation STU student, who is not a scholarship recipient.
She works 40 hours a week for eight hours a day at the Oromocto First Nations, from three to 11 p.m., Monday to Friday, while pursuing her Bachelor of Arts, majoring in psychology with a minor in sociology and environmental studies.
“I'm an independent student living away from home, so I don't have any parental financial support,” Leboeuf said. “I go through student loans and right now it's fine because I don't have to pay them back yet. But I am nervous about when I'm done and how I'm going to pay for them.”
Izzard reviewed the services that STU students can reach out to for emergency funds, like finance, student services and campus ministry.
For LeBoeuf, a first-generation university student without access to educational funds, student life is “like walking in a dark room with no light, you’re trying to find the exit.”
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