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"We liken it to invisible fencing we put around these scholars," said Ort, who helped create the covenant program. "Even though they may not be aware, there are people conspiring for them to be successful."

What covenant offers

The program offers a full scholarship to students whose family incomes are below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. The scholars receive free tuition, fees, room, board and books. They pay part of their way through work-study jobs.

All this free education isn't free. This year, the full freight on 1,383 students cost about $10 million, paid through a combination of federal, state and local grants, scholarships and work-study funding.

But the extras -- support staff such as Clark, the daily lunches or dinners, receptions and trips -- are financed privately with help from an endowment created soon after the covenant was created. This year, Ort said, the university spent about $200,000 on those extras.

Renatta Craven is appreciative. The Raleigh native, part of the first covenant class four years ago, was reared by her grandmother after her mother died when she was 2 and her father left the family. The duo somehow got by on Ida Craven's Social Security checks, and the covenant program prevented them from borrowing against their small brick home.

Today Renatta Craven graduates with honors. When she goes to work as a nurse at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, she'll look back fondly on her years in Chapel Hill. She probably would have gone to UNC-CH even without the covenant scholarship, but she knows her college experience would have been different if she had been saddled with a mountain of debt.

"I would have felt a step behind everyone else," she said. "The Carolina Covenant just made things more equal."

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