Boys Excluded from Sally Ride and ExxonMobil Science Festival

Submitted by Mastodon on Thu, 2012-09-06 21:24

Article here. Excerpt:

'BATON ROUGE, LA. — Middle school science teachers should expect a surge of student enthusiasm this fall when the Sally Ride Science Festival makes its way Louisiana State University on September 22nd, 2012.

Presented by ExxonMobil, the festival for 5th to 8th grade girls features hands-on workshops, guest speakers, and a street fair complete with food, booths and music. This will be the third festival Sally Ride Science has hosted at the Baton Rouge campus, and the renowned science education company is expecting hundreds of girls, teachers and parents to attend.

“ExxonMobil is proud to offer the Sally Ride Science Festival again this year,” said ExxonMobil Baton Rouge Polyolefins Plant Manager Angela Zeringue. “It’s important that we show girls in our local community how exciting a career in math and science can be. There will be many role models for the girls to learn from at the event, and we hope that some will be inspired to pursue careers in STEM fields. This is workforce development, and it is a lot of fun as well!”'

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ExxonMobile: http://www.exxonmobil.com/imports/contactus/contactus_contact.aspx

LSU Chancellor's Office: http://www.lsu.edu/chancellor/ (email: chancellor-at-lsu.edu)

POLITE emails or calls, please. Undoubtedly their intentions are good. However the road to Hell is as we know paved with good intentions, as is the on-ramp paved with false assumptions. That said, mentioning how boys are fast falling behind in schools and colleges and how projections around men's participation in the professions (scientific ones included) even as it stands now, simply do not justify such extreme and openly discriminatory measures as this one. In any case, anti-male discrimination when it comes to learning opportunities can no more be tolerated than anti-female ones.

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Submitted by Matt on Fri, 2012-09-07 01:52