A skewed process for scholarships

For five years, Bristol Virginia Utilities has offered college scholarships to graduating seniors from three local high schools.

But the program hasn’t treated all applicants equally. The offspring of BVU workers and Bristol Virginia city employees got a leg up on the competition.

That’s fundamentally unfair. Utility customers fund the scholarship program. Kinship should not be part of the selection process. The city utility should revise its selection criteria.

At present, scholarship applicants are awarded points for good grades, high SAT scores, extracurricular activities, community service, work history and demonstrated financial need. Students who plan to attend a local college get points for that as well. Those are appropriate criteria.

However, applicants also earn extra points – a bonus of sorts – if they have a family member who works for city government, the city school system or the utility. An applicant with a parent in government service is rewarded with more points than an applicant with a more distant relative on the city payroll.

Since 2005, five applicants with family ties to city employees have been among the top scorers invited for a final interview and four emerged as scholarship winners, the Bristol Herald Courier’s Daniel Gilbert reported last week. A total of 11 students have received scholarships since the award was created.

This high success rate for city kinfolk is no accident. The process was skewed to produce such results.

Wes Rosenbalm, the utility’s chief executive officer, admits playing favorites. He’s proud of the utility’s record of "giving an edge" to city employees’ children.

As flimsy justification, Rosenbalm argues city workers’ kids are more likely to return to the region after college than their peers whose parents work for private industry in the city. This makes no sense. Any student whose parents remain in the area – no matter who they work for – will be inclined to return home if a suitable job is available and they desire to live close to extended family.

Of course, Rosenbalm and others in the BVU hierarchy also see no problem with employing a disproportionately high number of sons of former and current city councilmen.

Returning to the scholarship matter, the utility wasn’t upfront with its preferential treatment. The utility’s Web site only requires that applicants live in the utility’s service area, be utility customers’ children and graduate from Virginia High School, John Battle High School or Tri-Cities Christian School. The program isn’t billed as a scholarship program for employees’ children.

Some private companies do offer scholarships to their employees’ offspring. In fact, Media General, our parent company, has such a program. But the funds for the program do not come from utility ratepayers; that’s an important distinction.

Also troubling, the utility might have violated the Freedom of Information Act when it refused to release applications to the newspaper, instead returning them to schools. At the very least, such a maneuver means the public will have to accept the utility’s word at face value rather than judge for themselves.

This isn’t a knock against the scholarship program, and we have no interest in the student records other than as they pertain to the question of nepotism. The scholarship program should continue, but kinship shouldn’t be a factor. Level the playing field and give the awards based on merit and need.