As the 2024 school year comes to an end, seniors scramble to fill out scholarships as they enroll into colleges. The Lampasas High School website lists a variety of local scholarships for students to fill out, but unfortunately not all of these scholarships house a safe environment for students. Typically, scholarships with a larger amount of money attached to them require an in-person interview. In-person interviews often occur in the company or foundation building that’s offering them. These interviews are conducted outside of any school staff’s monitoring, so students have no one to turn to if they feel uncomfortable.

It would benefit both the district and its students to host in-person scholarship interviews on school grounds with school staff monitoring the interview. This can protect students from any discrimination, unwanted questions and potential risks that meeting adults from private organizations and companies pose. 

Power imbalances can be monetary. Lampasas county is not a wealthy area and, with the rising cost of college, students can’t risk losing the scholarship by reporting inappropriate behavior, but it shouldn’t have to be that way. 

Hosting interviews on campus could also make scholarship offers more closely academic related, inspiring students to perform to the best of their abilities in academics, and potentially cut out a lot of paperwork with transcripts by letting interviewers converse with staff about students’ grades. 

School staff has to go through extensive background checks since they are working with minors, private firms do not. As students enter the adult world, it’s easy for them to be taken advantage of and push off uncomfortable behavior for monetary gain. It would be beneficial for the district, companies that offer scholarships and students to move to hosting in-person scholarships on campus.