To all - if you send an email, please make sure to include the President of American on the email as well.
I’m so glad everyone is on board…my husband sent an email to Thomas and the president of AU. Thanks for the support. Which media outlet should we contact? I’m thinking Washington Post or TV? I will spearhead on behalf of the group.
I think we should wait for an explanation from American. There could have been a technical error and they could have lost all of our videos by accident for all we know. In that case, they may be happy to review our videos and reconsider or possibly add a few finalists. We should wait and see their response before taking it further. Great job everyone for emailing and being on board with this! Please let us know if anyone gets a response 
@mvebx73 I agree. I’m going to give them some time to formulate a response, however I have a gut feeling that a technical issue is not behind this situation
@goodmom15 Yeah I completely agree. I think they really messed up and are scrambling to formulate a response to all of us.
So none of you think that perhaps they simply sent out an incorrect email to a large batch of applicants who in fact didn’t make it to the next round? (We’ve all seen similar situations before - Carnegie Mellon, Fordham, etc. - sending acceptance letters by mistake.) I feel like this is - although I wish differently - the most logical possibility, particularly since there was such a large group that made it to the next round compared to past years. Even if this is the case, I find AU’s handling of the situation unethical at best and feel that it still needs to be addressed. Thoughts?
As a parent, what I find most upsetting if this is the case is that the school allowed young students to “put themselves out there” in such a personal and vulnerable way, and then let these students simply assume that they didn’t make it to the final round due to the shortcomings of their submission - when in fact it had nothing to do with them or what they said because it was never even considered. So unbelievably morally irresponsible from an institution of higher learning.
@c151515 I very much agree. Whatever happened, it was their fault and they should have either told us not to waste our time on a video or they should have considered the video. Also- to everyone who emailed: The university is closed today due to weather and that may be why we are not getting responses.
c1515151 - In my opinion, that scenario is just as bad. To send out erroneous acceptance letters and not notify recipients of that situation and just cover it up with rejection letters is a PR nightmare. This situation is bad no matter how it is viewed. The FDDS office (aka LARRY THOMAS) screwed up in a very big way and completely underestimated our ability to figure it out. I hope we all get a response but I have a hunch that no one will hear anything back from AU. Therefore, we do need to discuss the next steps so that if AU consults this online forum (which I am sure they have) they will know we are serious.
We appreciate the concerns you have raised regarding the selection process for the Frederick Douglass Distinguished Scholars Program (FDDS). We do ask a lot of our applicants, which is testament to the highly competitive process, and the talent level and volume of our applicant pool. On average we receive a range between 1,000 to 2,000 applications annually for this highly prestigious award which is given only to five students.
The Admissions Committee reviews and identifies the most academically fit candidates for consideration by the FDDS Faculty Committee. Those students who are advanced to the committee are then asked to submit a short video to complete their applications. Because of volume and timeline considerations, we do this in the interest of ensuring the FDDS Faculty Committee has everything needed for their holistic and multi-level review.
We understand your disappointment in not receiving the scholarship, but hope that you can appreciate the rigor of a competitive process. Please know that not being advanced as an FDDS finalist has no bearing on a student’s further consideration for admission to AU as well as other merit awards and academic opportunities.
If you have an additional question, please feel free to contact us directly at fdds@american.edu or 202-885-6213
@AUFDDS I think I speak for all of us in saying that our disappointment is not a result of not receiving the scholarship, but rather that the our videos weren’t even viewed. Why ask a student to spend a significant amount of time creating a video that you have no intention of viewing? It simply does not add up.
@AUFDDS The issue was not that we did not make the final round, it was that our video submissions were not viewed. You cannot say you gave a “holistic and multi-level review” if you only watched some students’ videos. How is it fair that one student got more of a “holistic and multi-level review” than another? If you were not going to watch our videos, you should have told us not to submit them. Clearly some applications were given a multi-level review while others were only given a single-level review. This seems to go against your program’s policies and AU’s commitment to fair, equal, and non-biased application reviewing.
@AUFDDS it seems that if you require and request a video why not even watch it? Maybe select really only the best and ask them to do a video. Your process is not only misleading, unethical, it is abhorntly immoral. You are missing the whole point…the kids were mislead to think that they had a chance when they never did. Take some responsibility for your flawed process. Admission and an apology of a mistake goes a long way.
Dear FDDS/Larry Thomas - You are choosing to ignore our issue which is the fact, as supported by You Tube data, that you asked students to give up their time, their resources and their focus during the peak of the college and scholarship application season and then you never even viewed the videos! Your response is pathetic and in typical fashion of a Washington DC, bureaucrat. I suggest you come up with a better response because we are not going away until we receive an explanation as to why our videos were never viewed.
@AUFDDS: Respectfully - but frankly - your response is insulting and non-responsive. You can cloud the issue with rhetoric about “holistic and multi-level review” but let us be perfectly clear: You told numerous young people that they had made it further in the process when, in fact, they had not.
In fact, only after misleadingly informing the larger pool of applicants they had moved on in the selection process, did you finish reviewing applications and cull a select few from the larger group, and apparently only viewed the videos of those chosen few. The appropriate process would have been to send out notifications only after that process was complete, informing only those who had actually progressed. They are the only candidates who should have been instructed to submit a personal video.
I’m curious: Have you gone on YouTube and viewed the FDDS video submissions, particularly those that were posted publicly? Have you seen the hard work these young people put into their submissions? Have you watched the heart-wrenchingly honest revelations of these kids? Like the one who talked about being abused by her father? Or the one who struggled growing up with a mother suffering from mental illness? How do you think they feel knowing that their soul-baring submissions were not included in your “process”?
I’m also curious exactly who you are - @AUFDDS could be anyone – and if in fact you represent FDDS, whether President Kerwin is aware of your selection process and whether he approves of it. I assure you, those in positions of influence in other institutions of higher learning would find your “process” to be troubling, completely unethical, and wrong on many levels.
This is a disgrace for AU and needs to be addressed further than a simple post on a college blog site. I would like to hear President Kerwin either support this unethical process publicly or acknowledge that this was a flawed process that never should have been allowed to occur. Shame on you for defending an indefensible “process” and for your dismissive, non-responsive reply.
Maybe someone needs to call the Washington Post.
I think Frederick Douglass would want justice in this matter. I think the donors to AU should know about this.
@c151515 I am compelled to believe that this is the real FDDS, because the email they sent to me is almost a word for word match to that post.
@Breezy9 @c151515 this email post is also almost verbatim to the one we received too.
@goodmom15, I sent another, and I received a similar email in which they didn’t actually address any of my concerns.
Here’s what they said:
"Those students who are advanced to the FDDS Selection Committee are asked to submit a short video to complete their applications.
Per my previous email, we do this in the interest of ensuring the FDDS Selection Committee has enough time to review.
As we truly understand your concern, we will consider it as we re-evaluate our process."
I also received the same email. So, it appears that we were told we were selected for Round 2, when in fact we were not. We were asked to prepare a video for Round 2 but in actuality we were asked to prepare a video just in case the FDDS committee approved our initial applications and wanted to view the video. Is that everyone’s interpretation as well? If so, my next question is where do we go from here? We have all received our canned response from Larry Thomas. Are the next steps to go to the President? If so , is this in the form of emails or phone calls? Does anyone think this will make a difference? This is just so very wrong. It will not change our situation but I never want another applicant to waste time on an emotional, soul baring video just to have it casually discarded by American. And as an after thought, if Larry Thomas spent as much time doing his job as reading this thread and frantically answering emails on his Snow Day, then maybe none of this would have happened.