Kean University is progressively moving forward in opening new doors of opportunity to its students. In acknowledging lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgendered, and ally students of the LGBT community, the Kean University Scholarship Foundation has sought and conquered in making the student body as whole feel like a community. Community, unbiased and united, is the fundamental component needed to maintain this momentum. The New Horizons Scholarship is not a scholarship given to any Kean student who just happens to be LGBT or a heterosexual ally, rather the applicant need demonstrate in essay form what contributions and or research that individual has completed with LGBT individuals or communities; this LGBT topic essay is an additional requirement in the scholarship application progress separate from the initial one asked of every student applying. Applicants must also have maintained a minimum 3.0 GPA. New Horizons will be awarded to one student in the amount of $1,000 to aid with the continuance of higher education. The scholarship is currently available to all students, with preference given to those with full-time status.
LGBT students are often engaged with the society on a community service level or simply with the ambition for progress. Perhaps as a product of continuous segregation and targeted hatred, LGBT youth have the highest percentage of teen suicide. In addition, the personal identification of one's sexual orientation or gender identity is often plagued with controversy and disapproval; youth who "come out" sometimes face extremities such as parental abandonment or physical violence. Community service then, in company with empathy, is a growing aspect of the LGBT community. There is no wonder the New Horizons Scholarship incorporates service and research as an expected shelf in the application's construction. Whether students are volunteering time to a LGBT youth after-school program, a shelter for the abandoned, or simply writing letters with Garden State Equality to congressmen on the expected upholding of the universal rights of equality, there is a constant and ever present aspiration to give oneself to the community.
The admiral donor of this monumental stepping-stone for university equality is Mario Mesi, an already strong supporter of higher education contribution. Mesi, after an impressionable campus tour of Kean, decided that he would generously give to support nursing students. Through both an undergraduate and graduate scholarship program called the Ratta Nursing Initiative Scholarships, Mesi is currently helping 10 nursing students with a $1,000 each. Through a continuous friendship with fellow equality supporter, Michael T. Driscoll, Senior Development Officer/Dir Major Gifts for the Kean University Foundation, Mesi was later inspired to help initiate a scholarship program that honors the contributions of academically accomplished and community driven LGBT students and supporters. Mesi visits the campus when he can, especially for events that are in relation to his endeavor. During this year's third annual Human Rights Institute conference, Combating Hatred, Mesi was one of many supporters of equal rights that sat in attendance.
The introduction of this scholarship runs consecutive with the transformation of Kean's gay/straight alliance group on campus. Formally known as the P.R.I.D.E., an often generic and starting-point name for GSA's, the funded group has stepped into the foreground as entity striving for equality through advocacy and community. The group now conducts meeting under the name K.U.G.A.R. - Kean University's Gay/Alliance Reformation, a name coined by the group's current executive board treasurer, Mario Da Costa, a junior chemistry major. The group has had an overwhelming appreciation to Mesi's contribution to cause that hits home for many of them.
Others within the Kean community share the same enthusiasm. "Above all, this scholarship helps add to the diversity of the school," says Catherine Camacho, sophomore biology major. Lewis Mancine, senior English writing major, chimes in with a similar note, "If Kean wants to offer what they proclaim, 'World Class Education', then this is a step in the right direction.
