Students receive grants for emergency needs

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Infographic by Sierra Witzman

Students receive grants for emergency needs

Missouri Southern applied for the CARES Act grant and were presented with money that was specifically allocated for students.

“This is exactly what it was for is to help the lives of our students have a little bit of a gap of funding,”                                               said Director of Financial Aid, Becca Diskin.

Students were not given guidelines to use the money and were able to use it in a variety of ways.

“We were not required to ask them how they would be spending the money. We were  allocated the money to help students who were disrupted due to the events, so there were a lot of different ways that could have been used,” said Diskin.

The Chart conducted a survey sent out to all Southern students on Sept. 8 which collected responses from 300 students. Of those that took the survey, 268 students were either sophomores, juniors or seniors.

“I think I ended up using it to pay rent, bills, groceries, things like that cause I live off campus,” said Caroline Miller, senior biology major.

According to the survey, most students used their money to help with the cost of bills and housing expenses.

“I really do feel students were able to put it to good use,” said Diskin.

While two-thirds of individuals who took the survey stated that they felt the CARES Act funding was very useful, Diskin felt that it was not enough as it was only given to just over 3200 students.

“So, me personally no I don’t think we were able to help everyone, but I think we did it legally and within the confines of the information we had at the time we had it. I felt confident we did the best we could do,” said Diskin.

Miller stated that in an age of financial worry due to being in the middle of a pandemic, having the money from the CARES Act helped to alleviate some of the concern.

“It helped a little cause obviously we were in the middle of the pandemic it was like the first couple of months so definitely like financial worries were a concern at the time, so it was nice to have something to help a little bit with that,” said Miller.