(Probably) No dice

This past summer Vincent and I talked at a college fair to a representative of Berea College, a Kentucky liberal arts college south of Lexington (created interracial and eventually with a mission to serve working-class Appalachian students) that charges no tuition. Even though we're visiting a couple of private schools, it doesn't seem very likely that we would be able to afford to send Vincent to one of these. His grades do not make a "merit" scholarship likely, and on paper we have a household income - even with all of the student loan debt service we'll be paying - will make it hard for Vincent to receive much need-based financial aid. Today the Berea College financial aid director called me back - I'd first called about a Berea open house for juniors in a couple of weeks - and said that although they do consider debt service as an extenuating circumstance which might make them bend their rule that, for kids from households with two parents and one kid, to be admitted students' families can't make more than $47,000 a year - the gap between what we make and that $47,000 is probably too large for the debt service (as high as it is) to make up. Another complication is that we're just starting paying off student loans so merely reporting what we'd paid in 2007 or even 2008 reduces the actual impact in the year Vincent would start school (academic year 2009-2010). (I agreed that parents who start paying student loans off as their kids take off for college can't be too bright.) Another issue the financial aid director addressed: Although the federal financial aid form makes it look like financial aid programs care only about the incomes of parents students primarily live with (in Vincent's case, me and his mother) (different from 25 years ago when I was in college and they wanted the biological parents only to pay), one financial aid staff person at Vincent's favored school (Western Kentucky) had told us that "He can pick his father" - in other words, that the student can choose whether to put down the biological parent or stepparent down on the form. The Berea administrator agreed with my interpretation of the federal form that, if the stepparent is who the students lives with, it's the stepparents' income/support they're interested in. I said this was ironic because, even though we live in Louisville which Berea counts as part of Appalachia because it's in Kentucky, really, Vincent's father, working-class with Southern Ohio and West Virginia roots (like Stephanie and to a much lesser extent me) fits more into the mold of who the college is officially looking to serve. I told the financial aid director that I laughed when I heard the Western KY administrator's quote (even if she was wrong) - "He can pick his father." I said the quip sounded an awful lot like one of my son's favorite "Star Wars" quotes: "I am your father." In this case, instead of Darth Vader saying this to Luke Skykwalker, Vincent would be saying to me or his biological father: "He is my father."