The last thing most col­lege stu­dents want to be reminded of is how those who qual­ify will not be receiv­ing the Michigan Promise funds, bar­ring some inter­ven­tion dur­ing the appro­pri­a­tions process.

Monday, the University announced that it would be using $1.3 mil­lion in fed­eral stim­u­lus dol­lars to pro­vide aid for the fall semes­ter to nearly 10.5 per­cent of the stu­dents of Ferris State.

According to a press release issued by the uni­ver­sity two days ago, the 1,312 stu­dents who had been antic­i­pat­ing Michigan Promise aid and the 616 expect­ing the Michigan Competitive schol­ar­ship, who also saw a cut in pro­posed fund­ing by 50 per­cent, can expect a lit­tle finan­cial help from Ferris.

This is great. A mil­lion bucks to help a lit­tle more than 10 per­cent of the stu­dents is a won­der­ful thing and I’m glad the uni­ver­sity is tak­ing this action to ease the finan­cial bur­den that dif­fi­cult eco­nomic times have caused.

I only ask that maybe, just maybe, we sneak a few bucks in there for 12,000 of my clos­est friends and me with­out a “promise” but still a need.

The Ferris Board of Trustees, who unan­i­mously sup­ported the use of these funds to aid the scholarship-expecting stu­dents, is also respon­si­ble for approv­ing increases in tuition, like the one Ferris had at the begin­ning of this year.

Maybe we could have saved a lot of time and headache if instead of charg­ing stu­dents more, then giv­ing some of them money back, we just didn’t charge them more to start with.

So please, Ferris, keep on giv­ing. The stu­dent body will let you know when to stop… probably.