UNC names scholarship for Carson

Chapel Hill, N.C. — The University of North Carolina has established a scholarship named for slain student body president Eve Marie Carson.

“It’s easy to forget someone when five years from now everyone is gone. This is our way of saying you might not have known her but … this is what she stood for, this is what she embodied,” UNC student Emir Sandu said.

Students joined university faculty and administrators on Tuesday for the scholarship announcement.

The Eve Marie Carson Scholarship will be given to a junior at UNC who has demonstrated leadership and community involvement at the campus, local or global level. The scholarship will support the student’s senior year at UNC. To qualify, students must have a grade-point average of 3.0 or above.

Carson, a 22-year-old senior from Athens, Ga., was shot to death near the UNC campus March 5. Two men face murder charges in her death.

Shortly after becoming student body president last year, Carson talked with Sandu about the idea of starting a scholarship. Around the same time, she learned that UNC Chancellor James Moeser would be retiring.

“It was timing too good to be true. We settled on dedicating the scholarship in his honor,” said Andy Woods, a friend of Carson.

Before the scholarship details were finalized, Carson was killed. Now the scholarship will be dedicated in her honor.

The university has raised about $300,000 for the scholarship. The school plans to award one or two scholarships this spring. Officials said more donations will be needed to reach the goal of giving away five scholarships a year.

Student Body President J.J. Raynor hopes that having scholars who embody what Carson stood for will help remind people of how important she was.

Carson, a double major in biology and political science, entered UNC in August 2004 and became student body president last year. She was active in the university as a North Carolina Fellow and a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. As a prestigious Morehead-Cain scholar, she spent her summers volunteering and working overseas in Ecuador, Egypt and Ghana.

She was also a tutor at Githens Middle School in Durham her junior year, and in 2005, she was an assistant coach with a local chapter of Girls on the Run.