Nikki and I, the education specialist of GAAP meet with Director of Scholarship at PUC-Rio. PUC-Rio ( pronounced pooh-key he-o) is abbreviation of Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio de Janiero stands. At PUC-Rio, the office of Vice-Reitoria Communitaria is an integral part of the university because it helps them ensure diversity. This office is designed to ensure diversity of rich and poor predates the country’s discussion and implementation of race and class based policies to ensure access of poor and Afro-Brasilans. At PUC-Rio, there are several forms of scholarship academic and community. Academic scholarships are given to the students with the highest academic honors. Community scholarships are broken into several categories 1) financial consideration and academic status, trabalaocos en ago social, coral(music), bosa PUC, and sports.
During our meeting, the Director of Scholarships told us that the “trabalacos en ago social” are for students interested in social good and public interest. She stressed the point that this scholarship has helped PUC-Rio mission as a community university. The “trabalacos en social” scholarships along with others scholarships and fellowships ensure poor students have the opportunity. With the financial assistance, the university’s student body composition has changed from a campus that served only rich families to a more economically diverse of the campus that rich and poor students interact with one another. She emphatically stated with in 10 years the school has had influx of people that would typically not go to PUC because they lacked financial resources. She stated how important it was for poor and rich to interact with another in school, at home, and at work. We asked the question about the role of race in administering scholarships and her immediate response was NO. She explained that in Brasil, the rich, poor, black, white, live together and we forget race even though we have difference among races, we must be equal. Her statement threw me for a loop because of her strong statements about diversity and inclusion occurred simultaneously argued that introduction of race seems to alter diversity and inclusion. This statement had left me with an open question to ask “does the fact one takes account of race mean unequal treatment?” compared to not taking race into account is equal. This was very puzzling. Given in Brasil, race and class are intertwined together. Data shows that country is 54% African descents and which majority of the country’s population is poor and illiterate. Her statement that races are different, but we must treat them the same appears to say that the differences are natural. It quiet odd for one to acknowledge difference but at the same time state same treatment is the only way to deal with this difference.
At the close of the interview, we asked if the school has changed since she graduated in 1975, and she responded yes. She contributed the change to the increase of scholarships to poor people that were unable to afford PUC-Rio.
Follow up questions
1) Why doesn’t race play a factor in financial aid considerations?
2) Is acknowledging race truly treating people different given unequal status of afro-Brazilians and Branca( white) Brazilians a preferential treatment?
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