As a student at WSU Vancouver, I have heard almost daily about some of the difficulties that students from low-income backgrounds had entering, and even staying in, college. Surprisingly, I heard less about the challenges of getting financial aid, and more about how the entire process seemed to be too much to handle for low-income students. Most of these were not even considered to be in poverty by the book definition.
So what should we do to actually combat poverty?
A Feb. 4 editorial, “New tactics in poverty war: Local effort uses grass-roots approach to end vicious cycle,” discussed how fighting inter-generational poverty must be done at a local, not a national, level. Like the editorial pointed out, we need to stop making poverty into just sets of scientific and statistical data and then throwing money at it. Instead, we need to be intentional in guiding, supporting, and mentoring low-income people in their educational endeavors at a local level through dedicated programs.
Financial aid certainly is important, and I don’t want to belittle it at all, but there is certainly more than just the monetary aspect to “aid.”
Brennan Harper
Vancouver
