Hundreds of incoming Howard University freshmen were unexpectedly dropped from enrollment this month for alleged missed tuition payments, despite many students citing delays in their financial aid or scholarship funding. Days before the semester begins, many just received an email notifying them of the change for the first time.
As families scramble and social media explodes with the news, Washington D.C.’s 95.5 WPGC dove head first into the story, with 'The Good Morning Show' providing the platform to talk with impacted students and parents, former staffers from the university, and the Howard University Senior Vice President of Enrollment.
Highlighting a growing rift between the university administration and its prospective students, the conversation captured the emotional distress of students like Isabella Williams and Kari Bryant, who describe a lack of effective communication and the inability to reach university officials to resolve their status.
“Howard University has just kind of slacked with communication and have been withholding things such as loans and scholarships for some of us students,” Bryant shared. “So, they kind of threw this on us, last minute, and a lot of us are now unenrolled due to issues we've been trying to address with them for the last few months.”
“It's just really unfortunate that all this is happening. It's hard to get to anybody now. A few of us are getting reinstated and I'm still fighting for my spot now in the university. So I'm just hoping everything turns out right and OK in the end.”
Hosts Sherrell Duncan, Erica Kane, and Guy Lambert also incorporated external perspectives into the dialog, including a former university employee who alleges systemic internal dysfunction and Scholarship Coach Laverne Mickens, who disputes the university’s narrative regarding student negligence.
To address the situation, the show also talked with Keyana Scales, Howard University's Senior Vice President for Enrollment. Scales defended the university's actions as a strategic administrative measure to manage enrollment for the fall semester, involving 502 students. However, she acknowledges the potential for administrative error, providing an email channel for affected students to request reviews and promising that if errors are identified, the university will work to reinstate courses and housing.
“We acknowledge that since that communication was deployed, a number of students have responded to say, ‘hey, I do have these external scholarships that are on board.’ In our initial communication around billing, we did provide a link to a scholarship form that allowed students to notify us of any external funding that they were anticipating,” Scales shared.
“We will reinstate courses, we will work with our housing partners to ensure that their rooms are restored, but most importantly, we will communicate to families our apology and ensure that they have all of the additional information that they need to successfully on board.”
For much more on the coverage from 95.5 WPGC’s 'The Good Morning Show,' check out the full audio above.
