it's who you know

I conducted a grant assessment/jury workshop in class today, something I've done twice before. Each of the students writes a short grant application and I copy them without the student's names on them and they all read them and discuss whether they should fund them. This year I mixed three old ones in, two which received positive feedback and one less popular one. Even though back four years ago when they were written the same conditions applied, the reaction to these was significantly different. The students somehow didn't trust these additions, doubting the ability of the filmmakers. It's quite ironic in that they doubted the feasibility of a project that ended up being completed on even less resources than listed in the application they read.