Jan 29, 2014 03:03 PM EST By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

The January/February cover of Yale Alumni Magazine has caused a stir online for its imagery and message that appeared to equate students with fruit on a tree that the school needed to search for and pick.

The cover, as seen above, is an illustration of a person reaching for fruit from a tree. The accompanying message says: "Reaching beyond the low-hanging fruit... Yale College seeks smart students from poor families. They're out there - but hard to find."

Eleanor Barkhorn wrote for the Atlantic that the cover was "unfortunate" and "casts poor students as fruit to be picked." She argued the association says bright students from low-income families are consumer goods and not unique and individual students.

The cover story also touched on what a poor student's life is like at Yale. The story covers how some students may not afford to travel home on breaks, go out for dinner with friends and other types of alienation. What's more is there is an ad for Maserati on the back cover of the issue.

So the back cover of the now-infamous Yale Alumni Mag "looking for poor students" issue is a *Maserati* ad #FFS pic.twitter.com/JGyCEgBGDN

— Rob Golan-Vilella (@RGolanVilella) January 24, 2014

For many people who say they so much as casually follow football, Richard Sherman's face would probably not come to mind right away. That was until the NFC Championship game when he shouted on national television that he is the best cornerback in the game.

Since, he has apologized for his outburst, but only because he thought it brought attention to him and not his team. Sherman was berated online for being a "thug" and other negative things.

A salutatorian from a Compton, Calif. high school and Stanford University graduate (3.9 GPA), Sherman knows exactly how it feels to be poor among students with rich families.

"I was with kids from prestigious private schools, and they were drawing comparisons between Plato and Aristotle," Sherman previously told the Atlantic. "A lot went over my head. I hadn't even read The Iliad yet. I had to check out all these books just so I could know what everybody was talking about."

The point of the Yale Magazine article will likely be lost in the outrage over the cover, but it highlighted an important issue in higher education. Many low-income families may not realize their children are eligible for grants and scholarships at schools like Yale because of massive endowment funds specifically for that type of student.

"Like many top schools, Yale has striven in recent years to diversify its campus, not only racially but socioeconomically," the article's author, David Zax, wrote. "Yale's decision in 2008 to waive any parental contribution toward college costs from families making under $60,000 (and later, under $65,000) was simply the most public of several initiatives in recent years to make Yale more enticing for students of lower socioeconomic strata. Yale's financial aid enabled Tynan to come to Yale; he was asked to contribute $5,000 a year, which he managed between summer jobs, savings, and loans."

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