2015 Elks MVS Scholarship

mominflorida
Wed, 04 Mar 2015 05:47:09 +0000

Hello, this has been bothering me so I thought I would share it here - my daughter applied for the Elks scholarship at the Winter Park lodge in Florida -1830- and she won the lodge contest and the district contest and reached state but did not make it as national finalist. I called the lodge because on their newsletter they had announced the 6 lodge winners and also the 10 runners–up who would win $1000. I was very surprised when the Scholarship Chair said there were no scholarship awards for the 6 winners since all the money had been allocated for those who did not move on to the district level. When I called district, the gentleman in charge of scholarships said 4 of the Winter Park lodge kids had moved from District to State level but there were no scholarships for either those who had won or lost at the district level. I called the State chair two times and left a message congratulating the winners at the state level who were national finalists (none were from Winter Park lodge) and also asked were there any scholarships from the State for the runners up who did not win at the state level. My calls were not returned. It has been more than a week.
This process has left a very bad taste. It is ironic that the lodge thought it fit to award scholarships to 10 kids who had ranked lower than the top 6; but the top 6 (at least not my daughter and therefore most likely, not the other 5 also) have not been invited to the award ceremony, neither given any certificate nor given any scholarship award. If awards were to be given to the runners up at the lodge level, then the same needed to be done at the district and then at the state level. It appears at each level -the lodge, the district and the state – the folks are oblivious of what happens at any level besides their own and this is not correct.
I have looked at the elks posts on college confidential and I have not seen this happening in any other lodge – if anything the lodges are proud to award their winners with whatever funds they have (and the amount definitely varies). When I spoke to the Lodge Scholarship Chair I made it clear that I thought this process unfair if the goal was to reward the best with scholarships, because the lodge failed to do so. But I do not know if rules will be changed. I do plan on sending an email to the national and State elks association and make them aware that their process is flawed and they need to fix it so it is fair to all the students.
If the $10,000 were divided amongst the 16 I would be okay with it. But to throw the ones who were actually the winners and made it to the next level, under the bus, so to speak, is very shocking and disappointing.
I wanted to see if anyone else had this kind of experience and what did they do. Thanks for listening.