A reader writes in response to yesterday's post about Kenyon College's racially exclusive dissertation fellowship program:

You may be interested to know more about Kenyon College and its interest in diversity. They hold (or at least did when I applied for colleges in the early 1990s) an annual fellowships weekend when they invite promising applicants from high schools to visit the school, see classes, and then participate in interviews for the wide variety of merit-based fellowships to help to offset an otherwise hefty tuition bill. One of the points the college used when attracting applicants was this competition, the most lucrative prizes of which were the full-tuition scholarship for the most qualified. It turned out later that there were more than one 'weekends' going on at the same time, and that the fellowships for minorities were the only ones actually offered up to full tuition. The most a nice white guy like myself could win (regardless of academic merit) was a half-tuition fellowship. None of this was immediately apparent to the applicants at the time .... I found the college I ended up attending more attractive for other reasons (individualized tutorials with professors) and rejected Kenyon's acceptance offer, but came away surprised by Kenyon's duplicity. Thus your account of this restricted fellowship is in keeping with what I've already seen at Kenyon.