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High School Seniors: Become an ACLU Youth Activist Scholar!
High School Seniors: Become an ACLU Youth Activist Scholar!
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is offering 15 of the nation’s most committed, young civil liberties activists $7,000 each toward their first year in college.
Winners will also become part of an elite class of scholar-activists who will be invited to participate in ongoing activities with the ACLU, including the Youth Activist Institute training program at the ACLU's national office in New York City.
We are looking for students who have stood up for civil liberties, tolerance, free speech and equality! Past scholarship winners were recognized for a wide variety of civil liberties activism, including:
- Creating and teaching a class for middle school students that aimed to lower the risk that they would enter into the School to Prison Pipeline
- Challenging a principal’s policy of punishing students for writing “gay pride” on their arms and notebooks
- Advocating on behalf of American Indian youth in the juvenile justice system
- Producing and hosting a youth radio program focusing on LGBTQ rights and issues
- Working with school officials to ensure that intelligent design would no longer be taught in the public schools
- Starting an organization to get teen girls involved in the decisions that affect them, such as policies on sexual harassment and access to comprehensive reproductive health care
To qualify for the scholarship you must:
- Have demonstrated a strong commitment to civil liberties through some form of activism
- Be a high school senior planning on entering an accredited college or university as a full-time, degree-seeking student
- Have attained a cumulative GPA of 3.0 on a 4.0 scale at the time of graduation
- Not be a current ACLU plaintiff or witness in a legal case
Download the application
Please contact the Youth Scholarship Coordinator at the NYCLU, Danny Sternberg at dsternberg@nyclu.orgfor details about the scholarship.
Activists who complete the application forms will be judged on the following standards (in order of importance):
- The strength and depth of the candidate’s contributions to civil liberties
- Demonstrated leadership
- The likelihood of the applicant continuing commitment to civil liberties in the future
- Commitment to academic excellence
- Demonstrated financial need
If you are passionate about protecting, and fighting for, the Constitutional rights of everyone contact the NYCLU and apply for the ACLU Youth Activist Scholarship!
Deadline for submissions is Nov. 16, 2009.