The Student Government Association president and vice-president nominees Carlos Reyes and Matt Davis are looking to institute a new scholarship as part of their “Truth for Coogs” campaign.
The Cougar Pride Scholarship will be a $500 scholarship sponsored by local businesses, which will be handed out to one student during halftime at each home football game.
Winners will be selected at random from a raffle of all student names attending the games.
“Our goal is to help students on campus and to create more student pride,” Davis said. “It’s important for students to be aware of opportunities on campus.”
Reyes said the Cougar Pride Scholarship would do more than just give money away to students in need. Since the scholarship will be awarded only to students who attend UH sporting events, it serves a double purpose.
“(The raffling) will be done in a fair and impartial way,” Davis said. “All students need to do is come out to the games.”
Davis said he and Reyes’ idea for the scholarship was in response to the increase in student tuition announced earlier this spring. Since the tuition mark-up, Davis said students have expressed many concerns.
“We went to 500 students around campus and asked them their concerns about the University,” Davis said. “Tuition was the biggest by far. SGA can’t stop the tuition from increasing, but we can come up with creative ways to help students out during these difficult times.”
Reyes and Davis do not want to stop at one scholarship per game. If they receive the support from enough of the local businesses they have contacted, they plan to extend the scholarship to other sporting events.
“Our end goal is to do the raffles at basketball games, as well as football games, and to have multiple scholarships each game,” Reyes said.
In the event that Reyes and Davis are not elected, they said they would still support the Cougar Pride Scholarship. Davis also expressed his desire to do well for the UH community, especially students in need of financial assistance.
“Just because someone doesn’t get elected doesn’t mean that they can’t keep helping out the student body,” Davis said.
I think that what you all are doing is great with the sports, but I think that you should focus more on other events other than Football and Mens Basketball. No one ever supports the other events especially the womens.