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After a political science professor from Boise State University made a speech suggesting that women don’t belong in engineering, medicine or law, a student from Boise State raised over $70,000 to create a scholarship for women studying those fields, Good Morning America reported.
The Women in STEM, Medicine and Law Scholarship at Boise State will provide scholarship money annually to one female student starting this fall. Ally Orr, the Boise State senior who started the scholarship, told Good Morning America she launched it after listening to a speech that Scott Yenor, a professor of political philosophy, gave in November at the annual National Conservatism Conference. “Young men must be respectable and responsible to inspire young women to be secure with feminine goals of homemaking and having children,” Yenor said in his remarks. “Every effort must be made not to recruit women into engineering, but rather to recruit and demand more of men who become engineers. Ditto for med school, and the law, and every trade.”
Orr started raising money for the scholarship in early December and sent over 600 emails to professors, faculty and staff with the fundraiser link. Within a few hours, people donated thousands of dollars and the fundraiser went viral outside the Boise State community.
Mike Sharp, a university spokesperson, told Good Morning America the university is “thrilled with the outpouring of support from our community.” The scholarship is endowed and will be awarded in perpetuity each academic year based on how much it continues to grow; this year’s scholarship award will be around $2,000.
“I never want a girl to look online and say, ‘Oh look, a professor who teaches in higher education says I should stay out of STEM, medicine and law,’” Orr told Good Morning America. “They should see the scholarship and see that 500-plus donors said, ‘No, I will fund you if you want to go into these areas of study.’”
