"Only students who can truthfully answer yes to the following question may be considered for this award: Are you a student of noncolor, Caucasian descent (white)?" the scholarship application reads, according to The Times. Students at the University can win $50 by explaining in 100 words or less why they are proud of their white heritage and by explaining what it means to be white.
Jason Mattera, a junior at Roger Williams University, founded the College Republicans and is currently their president. When asked by The Times why he instituted the controversial scholarship, Mattera explained that he intended the contest to be a parody of scholarship programs aimed at minorities. He created the scholarship for white students as a response specifically to the list of minority scholarships that Roger Williams' administration compiled last summer, according to The Times. "If you are a white student on campus, you don't have anyone helping you, there is no one compiling a list of scholarships just for you," he told The Times. "Why is it that only students of color have this?"
According to The Times, since Mattera announced the scholarship, he has received a number of donations and offers of money to boost the award. One California man offered $2,000 with a note that said, "Kudos for your efforts to expose the hypocrisy of affirmative action."
At Roger Williams, however, Mattera has received criticism from his fellow students for having accepted a $5,000 Sallie Mae Fund scholarship for Hispanic students. "You should practice what you preach," said Maria Ahmed, president of the University's Multicultural Student Union, according to The Times.
This is not the first time that Mattera and the College Republicans have sparked controversy at Roger Williams. According to The Times, last October, the University administration suspended nearly $3,000 in funding from the group's monthly political publication, The Hawk's Right Eye, after Mattera published an article criticizing the speeches delivered at the University by Judy Shepard, mother of murdered homosexual Matthew Shepard, and James Dale, a gay man excluded from the Boy Scouts.
"In recent days, a publication of a student-funded organization has crossed seriously over the lines of propriety and respect. In the past, this organization has flirted with racist and anti-Islamic rhetoric," wrote Roger Williams President Roy J. Nirschel in a campus-wide letter, according to The Times. "The most recent issue of their publication … is pornographic in nature, puerile, mean spirited and stereotypes gay individuals as child molesters, criminals or deviants." The letter, whose subject line read, "Re: Mutual respect, civility and freedom of expression," concluded, "… we are a university too busy for hate." According to the Young America's Foundation, a conservative organization that claims to defend young people's freedom of thought and expression, funding for the publication has since been re-instated.