A new scholarship – the first of its kind to be offered exclusively to Georgetown students – may increase gay students’ motivation to become Hoyas.

Prospective lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students will soon have the opportunity to apply for a scholarship from the Georgetown University GLBT Alumni Group in partnership with the Point Foundation, a nationwide scholarship organization for LGBT students.

The scholarship, whose first recipient will be announced May 16, will provide support to one incoming LGBT undergraduate student who is academically outstanding and has encountered adversity based on his or her sexual orientation.

Kevin Ciotta (COL ’87), coordinator of the alumni group and one of the alumni who spearheaded the idea of a scholarship, said that this year’s recipient will receive $7,500 per year during his or her undergraduate years at Georgetown. The recipient will also be paired with a mentor from the LGBT alumni community.

Ciotta was managing editor of The Hoya from December 1984 to May 1985.

Ideally, Ciotta said, the scholarship will be awarded to an incoming freshman, but since the incipient scholarship was not advertised to incoming students this year, its first recipient will be a current Georgetown undergraduate.

“Primarily, this scholarship provides an opportunity for a student who might not otherwise have it to receive an outstanding education,” Ciotta said. “No student should worry that his or her educational opportunities will be limited because of sexual orientation.”

Bill McCoy, coordinator of LGBTQ community resources and assistant director of student programs, could not be reached for comment.

Ciotta said that he developed the idea for a scholarship after reading about the work of the Point Foundation, which collaborates with individual donors, corporations and organizations to develop scholarship programs for LGBT students who are in need of support and have faced discrimination or marginalization based on their sexual identity.

The foundation, which identifies itself as the first and only nationwide LGBT scholarship organization, has helped develop scholarship programs at colleges including Swarthmore College and American and Yale universities.

According to Vance Lancaster, executive director at the Point Foundation, the Georgetown scholarship is unique in that it is funded and organized directly through an alumni group, as opposed to an individual or corporate donor.

“We hope to use it as a model to create other alumni-based scholarships across the country,” Lancaster said.

Lancaster said that many of the LGBT students that his organization helps have been marginalized by those previously close to them or, in some cases, abandoned by their families due to their sexual orientation. As a result, academically talented, successful students with great leadership potential and experience sometimes face considerable difficulty in paying for college, he said.

“We really feel that [with these scholarships] we’re developing a new generation of leaders, leaders who will have a commitment to civil rights for all people,” Lancaster added.

At Georgetown, Ciotta said that he faced an environment that was “not open and tolerant” for LGBT students during the mid-1980s.

“Over the years, Georgetown has become more tolerant but there is still a lot of room for growth,” he said.

Ciotta added that he hopes the addition of this scholarship will help to promote diversity within the student body and consequently build dialogue on LGBT issues at Georgetown.

“This diversity will impact institutional culture as well as individuals in the Georgetown community,” he said. “Giving [LGBT] students the opportunity to attend Georgetown helps ensure that dialogue, a cornerstone of higher education, will continue to take place.”

The GLBT Alumni Group, which was established in 2001, currently has over 150 members. These alumni will be the primary contributors to the scholarship, and Ciotta said that they have pledged to sustain the $7,500 amount for a minimum of four years, with hopes of increasing the amount of the scholarship in years to come.

The group is also looking into ways to publicize the scholarship, which is not university-sponsored, to prospective students.

“I think [the scholarship] is a great way for the alumni to give back, and is a positive step toward creating a more welcoming environment for GLBTQ students,” GU Pride Alumni Relations Chair Linda Ichiyama (SFS ’07) said. “I hope that in the future they open it up to upperclassmen.”

Some students objected to the idea of such a scholarship.

“[It] is certainly the prerogative of any group of alumni to grant scholarships using their own funds as they see fit,” Joe Zwosta (COL ’07) said. “[But] I fail to see how granting a scholarship to a student merely because he or she is a homosexual will benefit the university or the GLTB group.”

GU Pride President Monica Escobar (COL ’07), on the other hand, said that she felt the scholarship would alleviate the pressure some LGBT students feel to stay “in the closet” in order to finance college and avoid hassles with family members over finances.

“On a campus where being [LGBT] is already difficult, this makes the coming-out process a little easier,” she said.