Ferguson, Mo. Protestor From Cincinnati Picked As Rhodes Scholar

A Cincinnati resident is among 32 students picked as American Rhodes Scholar Class of 2018. The 32 scholars were chosen from a pool of 866 candidates endorsed by their colleges or universities and the scholars will begin courses at the University of Oxford next fall.

Camille A. Borders is a senior at Washington University in St. Louis and majoring in history as a Mellon-Mays Undergraduate Fellow. Her senior thesis researches the ways in which African-American women emerging from slavery understood and practiced their sexual lives and how slavery affected relationships.

Borders was active in the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, and founded Washington University Students in Solidarity to address police brutality and racial profiling. She served as the student representative on the search committee for the next campus police chief. Camille is a member of Washington University Slam Poetry.

At Oxford, Borders will work toward an advanced degree in social and economic history.

The Americans will join an international group of scholars chosen from 64 different countries. This year's scholars represent a diverse group with 10 of the 32 selected students being African-Americans, the most ever in a U.S. Rhodes class.

"This year’s selections—independently elected by 16 committees around the country meeting simultaneously— reflects the rich diversity of America," said Elliot F. Gerson, American secretary of the Rhodes Trust, said in a statement.

The class also includes African and Asian immigrants; Asian, Muslim, and Latino Americans; an Alaskan Native (Aleut); and a transgender man. There also four students from colleges that have never before elected Rhodes Scholars in the 115 years of the United States Rhodes Scholarships – Hunter College, CUNY; Temple University; the University of Alaska Anchorage; and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Applicants are selected on the basis of academic excellence but that is only describe as a threshold condition. Scholars should also have "great personal energy, ambition for impact and should be committed to make a difference in the world" among other things.

The program is highly competitive and this year, more than 2,500 students sought an endorsement from their college or institution and 866 received the endorsement.

The scholarship was created in 1902 by the Will of Cecil Rhodes, a British philanthropist and African colonial pioneer. The scholarship provides all expenses for two or three years of study at the University of Oxford.

>>>You can see the full list of American scholars here.

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