https://projects.chicagomaroon.com/article/2019/career-advancement-leak/
Interesting article, in lieu of all the news surrounding corruption and heavy preference for wealth in the elite higher ed world.
Part of this may be out of necessity (UChicago is playing catch up, and looking to gain more traction in fields it traditional didn’t emphasize), but it’s not a good look.
Nothingburger.
My kid just went through the internship process via Handshake this year. She was shut out of numerous internships available just to Odyssey recipients. So “SIC” kids aren’t the only ones getting special treatment. And big deal anyway because she was still able to generate several interviews and offers from the huge number of employers available on Handshake, both Metcalf and other. The only “Special Interest” in her “Case” was being a UChicago student - that seemed to be enough (just a guess here but it’s probably because UChicago admits smart kids, and they are still smart by mid-second year).
Having a very hard time believing “students in need” are passed over for internship opportunities. They have access to the same counselors and Handshake portal as everyone else. BTW, my kid is also “in need” because she receives financial aid and is expected to generate summer earnings to help contribute to her cost of attendance.
This seems to be a non-story… it’s not that the career center was favoring wealthy students generally, but rather they were making sure that the children of some very specific parents who had supported the career center received a good experience with the career center, as a way of ensuring that these big donors appreciate career services and continue to give. Ideal? Maybe not. But I highly doubt it’s different from what happens at every other university.
Responding to : http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/22163420/#Comment_22163420
“@JBStillFlying What the heck are you talking about? Did you even read the article or the linked documents? The issue isn’t about the availability of jobs, the issue is about the availability of funding. To reiterate, because reading comprehension seems to be a continual problem here, career advancement lied to students with financial need about the availability of funding while simultaneously advertising money to connected students.”
I thought that all funding, even additional funding, is contingent on being given an offer of employment - in this case, employment in the public sector (since those funds were available for that purpose). The leaker told the Maroon that his/her advisees were “working really hard to land jobs” - ie, hadn’t landed anything yet. It also appeared that the leaker wanted to prioritize “first gen and minoritized groups” specifically for those funds and so didn’t want to share the news with a “privileged” group. Coming from a career advisor, that’s actually a bit presumptuous and offensive, as the deputy director pointed out. But regardless, it sounds like the cart was before the horse a bit; you have to land the job first before the funding can be available. UChicago made the same statement.
“The issue is that the Metcalf stipend ($4000) isn’t enough to live on in a lot of cities (good luck keeping flights to NYC, housing, and food under $4000 for 3 months!), so students will have to rely on other sources of money (i.e. on campus jobs, their parents, additional funding). Obviously, this is more or less difficult depending on individual student’s circumstances, and some students are locked out of doing things because they can’t afford it.”
“You’re right: it’s good that Career Advancement isn’t reserving jobs for connected students and makes an effort to try and make job-hunting more equitable (though I personally have heard some stories from student working in career advancement that makes me strongly doubt that the hiring process is completely left up to employers even in cases outside Odyssey Metcalfs), but that doesn’t make what they did here a “nothingburger” by any stretch of the imagination. It doesn’t matter if you get an internship if you can’t afford to work!”
Couldn’t even begin to decipher the “true process” for hiring Metcalf interns! In my daughter’s case, she did it completely on her own and THEN contacted Career Advancement about it. Didn’t realize that employers used criteria other than the “we interviewed you and think you are the best fit” kind of metric that tends to apply to most people looking for work. IMHO, those who think the secret ways in or out of a dream job are more typical than not . . . are ultimately disappointed to find that isn’t the case.
@HydeSnark you attend a top school in the world and anyone on an Odyssey scholarship is going for free . You have an embarrassment of opportunity and riches at UChicago. Your indignation is misplaced you should be more worried about those young students who are struggling to pay for their public state school with no such opportunity such as a metcalf grant. For every opportunity that one of these special students may be getting, their parents may be giving ten more students an opportunity to go to UChicago for free. Life isn’t always fair. Save your energy for more serious issues because there are a lot of them.
Well, 30-odd current and former Maroon editors called on the now-former EICs to take the photo down, but they got to do a nice Ben Bradlee cosplay while it lasted.
https://www.chicagomaroon.com/article/2019/2/12/29-maroon-editors-call-removing-photo-apprehended/
Fortunately, other editors took the time to read this from the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics (emphasis mine).
https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp
And five microseconds after the new Editors in Chief took office, we got this:
To the thread’s original point: I love outreach!
Would love it even more if it was available to non-millionaires.
Also, I fail to see why anyone is bringing up Odyssey Scholars. It’s a complete non-sequitur and a sad resort to whataboutism.
Re: claim that there was no lying
What’s the definition of a lie again?
Oh! Found it:
Did they make an untrue statement? Yep! Despite career advancement’s claims, there was funding available! Did they intend to deceive or create a false or misleading impression? Double yep! This funding email wasn’t going out to everyone despite the funds being (technically) available for everyone.
Re: nobody cares because there aren’t any comments on the Maroon article
Second only to seeing what college confidential parents think, this is probably the worst way to figure out what students think about a particular issue.
In any case, counterpoint: many memes were made about it and posted on the campus meme page, which is a much better barometer of student opinions.
@HydeSnark - you are using student opinion to gauge wrongdoing? Good luck with that. Memes are cute though. 
No one “lied”. The funding seemed to become available after the ex advisor-turned-leaker told his/her advisees that funding had run out. Whether he/she was mistaken, not kept in the loop, not doing his/her job . . . is unknown.
As the university pointed out, outreach happens all the time. How is this little dustup somehow different or particularly enlightening? All it did was to bring everyone into some of the office politics of Career Advancement. Big whoop. IMHO, just another reason to avoid them when possible - they don’t give particularly good resume or cover letter advice, among other shortcomings.
You and @DunBoyer can do better than remain lock-step with the Maroon’s “reporting” (or rely on memes as evidence of formidable, well-thought-out moral commentary). Think about it - on several occasions, you two have been able to instruct some of us UChicago cheerleader parents and even compelled us to step out of our weirdly reactionary online world for a bit. Is this really one of those occasions?
The advisor had previously been telling kids that there were no funds, and now suddenly these new funds come in. How does that make the previous advice, if given in good faith, a lie? Was there a way of identifying the kids who had been given the previous advice and setting them straight? If there was such a way, then that should have been done. I assume it was not possible. The article doesn’t allege that these new moneys were being kept secret or being restricted for use to the SIC group, only that the office saw a p.r. opportunity in specially bringing the new funds to their attention. I don’t approve of that action. It may very well reflect the dark side of the cultural changes that have been occurring at the University. However, I would want to know how significant such an event is or would have been within the functioning of the entire program. Is it really true that the rich kids disproportionately benefit from it? I doubt that, and I doubt that if any of the favored recipients of this letter had acted on that advice, the overall effect would have been very great. The existence of the preference given to the Odyssey kids is relevant in judging the fairness of the program as a whole. I agree, however, with Snark and Dun that none of this makes the sending of that letter right.
@JBStillFlying Once again, you completely missed my point. I think the meme group isn’t a particularly good way to gauge student opinions. You just somehow managed to pick one that’s several times worse.
Yes, it does! The anonymous career advisor explicitly says that he’s worried about what happens if “this communication were to be shared between students” and that “this funding process is not based on the one we’ve established.”
Why would they be concerned about special interest students sharing information about funding if it was offered to everyone? The advisor points the protocol was meant to be “a more equitable process” to disburse funding to students, i.e. to offer all students the opportunity to apply for funding, and then decide who gets it based on “financial need.” This is not what is happening here - the funding was offered only to the special interest students while still claiming to everyone else that there was no funding. At soon as the funding is offered only to special interest students, the entire office is complicit in a lie.
@HydeSnark - the ex-advisor-turned-leaker didn’t provide all the information here and the University specifically states that information about funding isn’t “restricted” to any one group. This was an extra e-mail - and was only one of many ways for students to learn about the funding. They weren’t reserving funds only for the well connected. You are upset because a few kids got an extra e-mail. I’m sure that happens all the time - to many using Career Advising - for all sorts of reasons.
The career office was NOT “still claiming there was no funding.” The ONLY person who actually DID claim that was the ex-advisor. You have no idea what other advisors said to their advisees - “there may be more, watch the newsletter” is certainly in the realm of possibilities.
“In any case, counterpoint: many memes were made about it and posted on the campus meme page, which is a much better barometer of student opinions.”
This is why I only judge campus opinion from the tone of Tide pod graffiti in Cobb.
^ The “burning” question is whether they are painting Tide pods or painting WITH Tide pods . . .
@HydeSnark , you ask why the adviser would be concerned that SIC students would share the email with their friends unless the funding was not open to everyone. That’s not the conclusion I draw from her concern. Wasn’t the problem in her mind the outreach itself, which she thought improper (as do I)? If you think that, you will be concerned about it becoming public, especially if the email is to go out in your name.
I do agree that the effect of the heads-up to this particular group would give members of the group a greater likelihood of getting that funding, even if not to any great extent or to the exclusion of others. Be that as it may, in my book it was wrong in principle and lends itself to the wider construction OP puts on it.
I am not sorry this whistleblower blew her whistle nor that the Maroon made a story of it. That will put the brakes on future such occurrences. I can hold that thought in my mind at the same time as I hold as very doubtful the more lurid interpretations being put on it, including by the whistleblower herself. It may be more than a “nothingburger” but is hardly a “Whataburger” (pardon my Texan).
@marlowe1 I’m sorry, but that interpretation doesn’t make any sense at all. I get they’re using HR doublespeak that is specifically structured to give them the maximal amount of plausible deniability, but the leaker is explicit that this is the career office is “actively using funds for students with no financial need when we have a large number of higher need students attempting to fund their summer opportunities.” Of course the career advancement is cautious enough to dress the inequity up in politer words of “outreach” but that doesn’t make it any better. The secret is that there is no difference between funding availability and funding outreach. You can’t get funding if you don’t know about it, full stop.
Rachael Ward’s response is extremely telling. She doesn’t even attempt to refute the leaker’s claims that this is an unfair handout to connected students that bypasses the normal process of offering funding to all students and making decisions on financial need. Rather, she gives a rather silly ‘the ends justify the means’ sort of argument for why this is okay and says that she’ll contact Sara (i.e. Bosworth, the director of Relations & Development) and have Sara ask donors for more money which then will be given to students with financial need. If, as you say, the email itself was the problem, and not the intended use of the money, why didn’t Ward dispute these strong claims on the part of the leaker? Why would her response be to justify subverting the process to earmark money for connected students and then say, essentially, that even though this isn’t going to students that need it, we’ll just ask for more money and if we get it, we’ll give it to students with financial need? That response is, frankly, bizarre if this funding is available for everyone.
I dunno, Snark, I have to look at the evidence of what was actually happening here as against the leaker’s rhetorical characterization of it. The words you quoted above certainly sound like the latter. Yes, to the extent that even one of the favored group gets or would have got funding as a result of the letter, then in a zero-sum world, someone else wouldn’t have got it. That’s wrong, and we are in agreement it’s wrong. Perhaps, as you suggest, even Rachael Ward agrees it’s wrong - or in any event can only be justified by the supposed good effects. The magnitudes involved matter, however, given all the moving parts, serendipities and other preferences in play here. Whether the leaker’s “strong claims” are more than “strong rhetoric” has to at least be considered and not bought literally and at face value in all their extremity. I advise skepticism - a strong U of C virtue.
I interpreted Ward’s response as more of an awareness of the full picture which could possibly have a remedy. Not sure it’s prudent to assume that the worst was intended - Marlowe’s zero sum game, for instance.
The reality is that these little tip-offs happen all the time. Someone in need of funding who particularly impresses an advisor, for instance, might get an early heads up on something coming down the pipeline - might even get extra help in completing the paperwork. Advisors use their personal discretion frequently to help out both kids and employers that they’ve formed a relationship with. While there should be fair protocols, an organic component is not only a good thing - it’s actually inevitable. While funding is a sensitive issue because equity and attention to need should be adhered to, in reality funding can come in unexpected waves from unexpected sources. So this time it’s the donor’s kids. Next time (or the time before) it was some kids with significant need. No one complains if they are on the receiving end of such extra attention. Only when they are NOT do we hear complaints about lack of fairness 
In this particular case, it was clear that the ex-advisor-turned-leaker simply didn’t have a relationship with those SIC kids. He/she stated as much in the e-mail. This attempt by Ward (the deputy director) to use unfamiliar staff to push a PR stunt was poorly thought-out and the overall form letter sounded awkward at best. Why not reach out to these kids and establish a personal relationship with them first rather have your underlings send along some after-thought CYA form e-mail? In the future - particularly due to the unflattering spotlight on the Career office, I’m betting this stuff will be handled by the director or deputy and not just staff. But will it cease altogether? As we say in MN: Nope.
Maybe the view from Minnesota is different, but on campus you’ll have no trouble finding people who think any attention to low-income students is too much. Blaming the poor for one’s own woes is easy - and tempting for students who struggle despite having every advantage money can buy.