by John Shearer
posted March 14, 2008
From March 1-4, Baylor School senior Val Hansen was at the University of North Carolina as a finalist for the prestigious Morehead-Cain Scholarship.
As part of her visit, she and the other finalists met UNC student body president and Morehead scholar Eve Carson, whose tragic murder has saddened people throughout the country.
“I met Eve only briefly,” said the daughter of Gregg and Maria Hansen. “She was visiting the Morehead finalists and asking if we had any questions. Like the other Morehead scholars, she was very friendly and eager to help.
“She clearly loved UNC and wanted all of us to go there,” added Miss Hansen, who has been a day student at Baylor since enrolling as a member of the school’s first sixth-grade class in 2001.
And as Miss Hansen took the shuttle back to the airport from campus, she was talking to some young men from Athens, who casually asked her if she had met Ms. Carson.
After she told them she had, they proudly mentioned that she was from Athens, she said.
“We then discussed how awesome that must be to be the student body president of a school like UNC, and we decided she must be a pretty amazing person,” said Miss Hansen.
Within a day or two after being impressed, however, Miss Hansen was almost in shock after hearing the news that Carson had been shot to death near campus during the early morning hours of March 5.
This week, with the help of surveillance photographs, two suspects have been arrested.
“To hear about her death two days after having a conversation like this one felt almost unbelievable,” Miss Hansen said. “Her murder is an event I don’t understand, and I cannot imagine how those who loved her are feeling.”
The Morehead-Cain Scholarship – which added Cain to its name in 2007 after a very large gift by the Gordon and Mary Cain Foundation – has long had a connection to Chattanooga. Since its inception in the 1950s, dozens of students from Baylor, McCallie and Girls Preparatory School in particular have been finalists or recipients.
Current McCallie senior John Wells is another local finalist, and 2006 McCallie graduate John Raymond Stevenson, a former boarding student from Birmingham, was one of only 53 selected for the scholarship that year.
For a number of years dating from the 1950s, two students each from Baylor and McCallie were almost automatic recipients each year.
Since then, the competition has stiffened greatly for what many believe is the most well-known and prestigious college scholarship to a Southern university, with the possible exception of the Jefferson Scholarship at the University of Virginia.
The Morehead Scholarship – which is named for university philanthropist John Motley Morehead III, a chemist whose work laid the foundation for the development of the Union Carbide company -- includes free tuition and other amenities for four years. Special summer enrichment and travel programs, such as those in which Carson participated, are also included.
A number of other scholarships have been patterned after the Morehead, which was copied from the Rhodes Scholarship in that it likes students versatile in a variety of areas.
According to news reports, Carson had opportunities to go to Ivy League colleges but chose to attend UNC in part because of its diverse student population.
In Athens, she was the valedictorian at Clarke Central High School, a public school known for its diversity as well. The stately looking high school is located near many of the University of Georgia’s historic Milledge Avenue fraternity and sorority houses.
The Morehead-Cain Scholarship recipients will be announced later this spring, and Hansen said she would love to go to school at Chapel Hill.
“I absolutely loved it,” said Miss Hansen, who is involved in track, cross country and dance at Baylor as well as academic and community service clubs. ”It's a wonderful environment, and it has everything I'm looking for in a school, both academically and socially.”
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