<p>Doesn’t matter, unless it was stated on the face of the award letter or, as I suggested above, the candidate was asked to sign a waiver indicating she had read, understood and accepted the school’s policies with regard to scholarship awards. Just because the policy was written somewhere doesn’t mean it’s reasonable to expect the student to have read it. Some families will have gone through the school’s scholarship and financial aid policies with a fine-toothed comb; others will not. The school is well aware that not all families will have read every page on their website, so the burden is on the school to either get their award letters right, or include a statement of policies with the letter.</p>
<p>To be honest, when my child has received scholarship and/or financial aid offers, I have NEVER gone back to the institution website to see if maybe the offer somehow conflicted with a school policy of which I was unaware. When a school offers my child X dollars to participate in a school program, I take that offer at face value. Frankly, it shouldn’t be up to me to figure out if the school made a mistake . . . that’s the school’s problem.</p>
<p>Of course, in the future, Elon will be covered. Once news of this fiasco gets out, anyone who’s well-informed will know better than to take anything the institution says at face value. So, legally, for future mistakes, they’ll be covered. But is that really the reputation the school wants?</p>
More important, it is perfectly reasonable to assume that a personalized letter prepared and delivered by the school would take precedence over any general language on a website, even if read by the student. In fact, I think the only reasonable conclusion to draw from such an award letter would be that the school, for whatever reason, had decided to override its scholarship policy for this highly desired student. </p>
<p>To lighten things up a bit, I’ll tell a story about going to the mat for one’s rights that dates back to H’s and my law school days. Just married, we had signed up for a “furnished” one bedroom apartment in the brand new married grad student building. Upon arrival, we discovered there was no bed in the bedroom, and it was explained to us that the pull out couch in the living room was all we would get. We stood our ground that a furnished one bedroom apartment would by definition have a bed in the bedroom, and my wet-behind-the-ears second year law student hubby pushed and pushed until he ended up meeting with the august general counsel of the university. We got the bed.</p>
I agree with this–it’s not like it was a scholarship for which the student was obviously ineligible. I think it would have been quite reasonable to rely on the letter (unless there were some disclaimers in it).</p>