Today, there was an apology for excluding home schoolers from the Subway Every Sandwich Tells a Story Contest. This newly released apology was written by Subway’s partnering Scholastic public relations department.
The apology reads:
Regarding your concerns about the Subway contest that excludes home schools from contest eligibility, Scholastic and Subway apologize to all individuals who have taken offense at this. Our intention was never to make independent schooled children feel discriminated against or excluded from this specific promotion.Throughout the course of the year Scholastic runs a number of contests and sweepstakes that are open to all teachers and students. The eligibility of this contest in particular was solely put in place to award a large group of children with the grand prize of $5,000 worth of athletic equipment. We do however understand how home- schooled children could benefit from this type of prizing and will make sure eligibility is open to everyone in future promotions.
We appreciate your feedback and will make sure a similar situation does not happen in the future.
While they are still not accepting entries from home schooled kids, I commend them on their formal apology.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I think they did make a poor judgment call in the beginning because they did specifically word their rules to exclude homeschoolers. So, they should have seen this coming when they had to put that in there. But it’s very good that they want to correct the situation for the future.
Steph
I agree, it’s nice to see a company admit a mistake. Wish they’d open it up to the homeschooling population, though!
Jane
While it is completely their “gig” in that they can choose to make the contest rules and award whomever they want, they certainly should have figured that if they excluded someone that someone would actually complain.
So, I would’ve advised different wording that didn’t specifically say homeschoolers are ineligible, but stated that the equipment was for public or private schools.
It would have saved them a lot of grief.
Definitely nice to see them own up. Not every company “listens.”
That is so nice to see shame on them! I know homeschoolers could use grants like this. So why not ahve one just for homeschoolers do they do those?
I’m glad that they made an apology. It always irks me when home schoolers are excluded, we need “school” supplies just like any other school, probably more because we don’t get gov’t funds!
I am glad they apoligized but I still don’t understand why they would have excluded home schooled children.