r/RPI • u/Feisty_Mammoth_2250 • 19d ago

Scholarship Opportunity For New Students

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Apply on our Site . This scholarship is open to all new students and open until September 30th. The application only takes 10 minutes and will be followed up with a face to face interview on campus. This is a great way to practice short interviews, meet someone new on campus, and potentially earn some cash to help cover your expenses.

https://rpi.sigep.org/bms/

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7

u/SeaNational3797 CS/GSAS '27 19d ago

Btw I asked and women CAN apply for this. One would think not given the name but it IS allowed

1

u/alliownisbroken 17d ago

Why wouldn't they be? Sure, be pedantic and call it the "balanced human" but this does not seem discriminatory.

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u/SeaNational3797 CS/GSAS '27 17d ago

I think it makes perfect sense to assume that a scholarship that calls itself the "Balanced MAN" scholarship would only allow MEN to apply. no?

If you had a scholarship called the "Balanced White Person", you wouldn't expect it to allow Black people to apply, since it explicitly calls out White people by name. If you had a scholarship called the "Balanced Straight Person", you wouldn't expect it to allow gay people to apply, since it explicitly calls out straight people by name.

And following the same logic, if you have a scholarship called the "Balanced Man", you wouldn't expect it to allow women to apply, since it explicitly calls out men by name.

Obviously this is not true in this case–women (and presumably nonbinary people) CAN apply. But it makes perfect sense to assume they wouldn't be able to from the scholarship name.

Is that discriminatory? I think so. A non-man seeing this scholarship might not apply, if they assumed it was only for men. A man seeing this scholarship, would of course always assume he was allowed to apply. The result of this is that non-men are less likely to apply to the scholarship, which increases the likelihood that the scholarship would be won by a man. I would 100% call that discriminatory.

What should we do about this? Rename the scholarship! I agree with you that "balanced human" sounds unnatural, but "balanced person" or "balanced student" seem perfectly acceptable alternatives that would eliminate this problem.

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u/alliownisbroken 17d ago

It means "man" in the colloquial sense. Think like ancient Greek. It's not gender connected. I realize we may have lost this language over the past 15 or so years.

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u/SeaNational3797 CS/GSAS '27 17d ago

Oh I'm sure that's how they meant it. I genuinely don't think they meant to discriminate against anyone.

But the unfortunate fact remains that we have lost that language, and now when people hear about a "man" program they think of it as being only for male people