OLC scholarship fund gets $5,000

| Tuesday, October 11, 2005

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KYLE — Oglala Lakota College has received $5,000 from the Oneida Indian Nation of New York to support student scholarships on the campuses of Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and Rapid City.

The Oneida award will be used to support five $1,000 scholarships for OLC students. In the fall and spring semesters, the college will award $500 scholarships to five students. The scholarships awarded will be based on the best essay submissions on “The Future of American Indian Peoples.”

In a news release, OLC president Thomas Shortbull commended the New York tribe as being the first to contribute to the college’s student scholarship program.

“The Oneida Indian Tribe of New York is one of the tribes with a very successful casino, and it is nice to see a tribe willing to share their resources with our students on the Pine Ridge Reservation,” Shortbull said in the written release.

OLC’s enrollment averages between 1,300 and 1,400 students a semester, and 90 percent of those enrolled are eligible for financial aid. Federal Pell grants do not cover the financial needs of OLC students, Shortbull said. An OLC student with full Pell eligibility receives $2,025 a semester, compared to the total $6,000 semester cost of attendance at OLC, he said.

Shortbull said there is a critical need for scholarship support for students. The tribal college had set a goal of raising $6 million over the next seven years for scholarship endowments through Phase IV of Rebuilding the Lakota Nation, Shortbull said.