By Tiffany Xie, Student at Tufts University and LEDA Policy Corps Member
With an interview around the corner and a suit that no longer fit, I applied to my university’s “Unexpected Hardship”
fund. Like many other college students from a first-generation, low-income (FGLI) background, I didn't have the means to spend $100 to $200 out of nowhere.
Fortunately, Tufts University, and many other institutions, provide emergency grants for situations like these. Yet, I only discovered the existence of such grants after a chance meeting with an upperclassman. Had it not been for that fortuitous encounter,
there’s no guarantee that I would’ve ever learned about them.
Many of my FGLI peers (including seniors!) had similarly never heard of such grants. Unsettled at the fact that they could all lose out on hundreds of dollars in resources, I compiled all the grants I knew of into a tightly packed email and sent it to
every single FGLI person on my radar.
While this undertaking cost no more than half an hour, it revealed a structural flaw in the execution of financial support programs for FGLI students. It should not be left to us to take on the unpaid labor of supporting our entire community. Not to mention,
there’s no way I could have been personally acquainted with every FGLI student on campus. There needs to be a better system in place to not only offer these grants but effectively promote them.
My experience with regular emergency grants sharply contrasted with my experience receiving COVID-19 related grants from Tufts funded by the CARES Act.
In this case, FGLI students received two types of financial support. First, there was an automatic deposit of several hundred dollars for all eligible students—no applications necessary, only a history of financial need. Second, the option to apply
for further emergency funds as needed. The application is terse, requiring only that students submit enough information to identify them, to specify how much they need, and what expense type they are requesting funding for. The application is quickly
reviewed and approved, and funds are deposited soon after.
In regards to financial support, Tufts did a stellar job responding to the needs of FGLI students. But that begs the question—why not utilize the same procedures for non-COVID emergency grants?
One notable difference between the standard versus COVID-19 emergency grant program is that the former comes in the form of reimbursements, while the latter does not. I’m fortunate in that, while I could not afford to pull several hundred dollars out
of my budget for a suit, I had enough cash on hand to spend (on the condition that I would be reimbursed).
That said, there are many students who wouldn’t have been able to front several hundred dollars. And what is an FGLI student supposed to do when they’ve been getting all A’s in their computer science classes, but their old laptop gives way a week before
finals? Scraping together a few hundred bucks for a new one, even knowing that they will be reimbursed later, is no easy task when their family income is already stretched out trying to cover rent and groceries.
What makes an emergency an emergency is that it is unexpected and requires immediate attention. It’s essential that higher education institutions, with support from the federal government, improve the process for FGLI students to receive emergency funds
by automatically providing aid to students in times of crisis. This would require more higher education funding from the federal government with the requirement that a proportion of funding be directed to the students.
Moreover, higher education institutions need to be more proactive in publicizing FGLI-specific financial resources. At Tufts, there are many: a professional development fund, an “unexpected hardship” fund, a health and wellness fund, and a “Swipe It Forward”
program that addresses food insecurity. Yet, what use are they if the people who need them most don’t know they exist? To make sure that we do, institutions need to be better at keeping students with demonstrated financial need in the loop. Examples
of ways to do this are regular and targeted outreach to FGLI students and a webpage that features all FGLI-related resources in one easily shared and accessed location.
These are all simple but powerful next steps in uplifting the FGLI community.
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