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As the debate whether to prioritize students’ merit or need when it comes to the Lottery Scholarship continues, some state lawmakers have officially refuted raising the grade point average requirements for the scholarship.
In a forum organized by various organizations in the South Valley on Tuesday, New Mexico Sen. Michael Sanchez, D-Belen, and Sen. Linda Lopez, D-Bernalillo, expressed concerns with changing the GPA requirement of the Lottery from the current 2.5 to 2.75.
Raising the GPA requirement would be an exclusionary move, Sanchez said.
“It excludes certain students from being able to go to college,” he said. “There are a lot of people who work long hours, who come from different backgrounds, who may not be able to get a higher grade point average. I don’t think students should be excluded.”
Funding for full-time awards for the Lottery is supposed to run out during the beginning of next fiscal year because of lower revenue in lottery sales in the state accompanied by an increasing demand for the scholarship in the state. According to the New Mexico Higher Education Department, lottery sales only amounted to $40 million this year, leaving funding for the Lottery at a $20 million shortfall.
Legislators and University administrators have been discussing the most probable possibility of raising GPA requirements to solve the problem. Last month, UNM President Robert Frank told the Daily Lobo that “if I have to bet, I’d bet on that as one likely solution.”
Sanchez, who originally introduced the Lottery Scholarship bill in the Legislature in 1996, said he is working with the Lottery Scholarship Fund Work Group in the Legislature at the moment. He said he will be ready to push for a bill that would not raise GPA requirements when the 2014 legislative session begins in January.
“We are going to introduce some bill, and it will be introduced this session,” he said. “It’s not going to be any of the recommendations from the president of UNM or another group.”
Lopez, who is running for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination for next year’s statewide election, said a higher GPA requirement would hurt UNM’s commitment to education.
“Raising the GPA requirements would not help any more of our students graduate,” she said. “What our intent is for education to be open, allowing our students to come in to get a wide breadth of information … As you continue to mess around with regard to the GPA, you’re fiddling around with students’ access to stay in the system to have access to the scholarship.”
And based on her experience, this move would be a “discriminatory” one, Lopez said.
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“My background is in (human resources) development — bachelor’s and master’s degrees in HR development,” she said. “The best employees that any company would hire will always have between a 2.0 and a 3.0 GPA … So why are we discriminating? Why do we continue push up that?”
In the forum, members of organizations that hosted the event, most of which are Hispanic, shared stories of how the Lottery had been beneficial to their college careers. Participants’ speeches were translated to Spanish.
Jorge Garcia, senior program manager of UNM’s El Centro de la Raza, an organization that promotes Latino student education and one of the event hosts, said prioritizing student merit with regard to the Lottery would disadvantage students of color.
“Although no one could actually argue with merit, excellence and all of that, when we start talking about merit, we’re also talking about a system that is not very good,” he said. “For the most part, our kids from our communities will end up getting excluded.”
Garcia said that although maintaining academic excellence in the University is important, the Lottery should prioritize students who need it the most.
“This is not to say that we don’t want excellence,” he said. “But based on the fact that the educational system is not the same for everybody, and based on the fact that the decisions that will be taken will end up supporting the students who already have the means … it’s an attack to our students to favor excellence.”
Sanchez said he urges the state government to look for more revenue sources to support the Lottery, including the state’s capital outlay fund.
Lopez said she plans to fight against raising the Lottery’s GPA requirement during the legislative session.
“The Lottery Scholarship is here to help all of our students in the state of New Mexico,” she said. “That was the intent, and that is the intent that we would keep.”
