Posse

“I never would have dropped out of college if I had my Posse with me.”

This remark is the reason that over 50 students are here at Middlebury College today. It was this statement that inspired the foundation of the posse Scholarship program in 1989, and since then, Posse has sent over 4,800 students from cities like New York and Chicago to elite institutions across the nation. The Posse Foundation chooses its scholars by conducting a three-round process of interviews in an attempt to find highly motivated students with both extraordinary academic and leadership potential. Posse does not place a great deal of significance on SAT scores, but pays very close attention to GPA and class performance trends in high school. However, what they search for and value more than anything are leadership activities that students have implemented outside of their required classwork. These pursuits range from volunteer work in one’s community to starting an organization in one’s high school; Posse essentially works to find students who have independently taken initiative to achieve goals of their own creation.

Posse is not the kind of scholarship that just throws money at the students who obtain it. Rather, the concept behind the “posse” itself is to work as a support system that ensures the continued enrollment of gifted students from urban environments who may otherwise have an extremely difficult time adjusting to a community such as Middlebury College. For this reason, Posse scholars are introduced to each other eight months before arriving on their respective campuses and meet each week for training. The purpose of this pre-collegiate training is principally to learn how to work together. As a Posse scholar from New York, Daniel Pena ’16, put it, the training teaches the group how “to work as a traveling support system for one another as they use their leadership skills to help make college campuses more welcoming to people of all backgrounds.”

That being said, contrary to what seems to be popular belief, Posse is not a minority scholarship and is also not need- based. The reason that Posses are usually so ethnically diverse is due to the nature of public schools in places like New York, but what Posse is really searching for is diversity of experiences. Students from a wide assortment of socioeconomic backgrounds and ethnicities are chosen as Posse scholars because Posse believes that diversity within leadership is essential to solving many of America’s more convoluted social problems.

As a member of the first-year Posse from New York here at Middlebury, naturally I am a huge advocate for the program. Although for the majority of my time here I have been quite happy, whenever I am in need of academic, emotional or any form of support, members of both my Posse and other Posses have been there to help me maintain my sanity. Even in the few short months that I have been here, I have witnessed Posse scholars take extraordinary strides to make both Middlebury College and the local community a better place. People like Rana Abdelhamid ’15, who started the Amnesty International group on campus during her first year. People like Debanjan Roychoudhury ’16 and Cheswayo Mphanza ’16, who constantly take the time to serve the community by spending time and sharing their talents for rap and spoken word with children at the Addison County Teen Center.

Recently, a student named Kyle Lawrence at Franklin & Marshall College critiqued Posse, stating that it did more harm then good, and that, “diversity of race and socioeconomic backgrounds does not a thing for academic success of students.” I would question the significance of this point, however, and ask Mr. Lawrence if he feels that academics are the only way to obtain knowledge at an elite institution. Some of the most valuable things I have learned since arriving at Middlebury College in September have been attained simply through my interactions with people who have different stories from my own. This is a significant part of what Posse strives to achieve in their mission. However, academic excellence is also a must, and I am both proud and grateful to have been chosen to fulfill every aspect of this mission.