Howard Reinstates Classes for Dozens of Students

Howard University has re-enrolled at least 40 first-year students after it cancelled 502 students’ enrollment last week for missing a payment deadline.  

According to WJLA News 7, 46 students have been reinstated and the university is reviewing other students’ appeals.  

Keyana Scales, Howard University’s senior vice president for enrollment management, told WJLA News 7 the incident was caused by low resources. 

“What we have since realized is that there are a number of students who have indicated that they have actually submitted the information or attempted to satisfy our requirements,” Scales said. “We are in the process of reviewing all of the email messages that we are receiving with care to ensure that we are looking at records, the documentation that students are presenting, and, if required, being able to enroll them or reinstate their classes.”

“I think that the lesson learned here, to be completely candid, is we need to double down on resources,” she added.

On Wednesday, Howard informed incoming students “who did not meet the established payment, payment arrangement, or scholarship and other financial aid reporting deadlines” that they had been unenrolled. In a statement, the institution said it had communicated to students the enrollment requirements, payment expectations and deadlines via email, video and orientation sessions starting in March. 

Still, hundreds of students were shocked to receive the email less than a month before classes start and took to social media to criticize the institution. 

Isabella Williams, a student who posted a teary video on Instagram on Wednesday after she received the email from Howard, is one of the students who has been reinstated. “I just got my classes back. I hope that means we’re moving in the right direction. Unfortunately, I don’t have my merit scholarships on there and that’s an essential part of me attending Howard University so I hope that can be figured out,” she said in a post Friday. 

“There are some students that have been entirely reinstated; there are other students who are waiting. I’m not going to stop talking about this until everyone has their situation handled properly,” she said. 

The situation echoes events from last summer, when Howard students said they were “blindsided” to receive notices saying they owed the university thousands of dollars. The breakdown in communication came as Howard transitioned to a new student financial platform, the institution said. Then, like now, students expressed outrage on social media and raised thousands of dollars via crowdfunding campaigns to pay off their balances.