Micaiah Bilger, an assistant editor at The College Fix, says the $500,000 Goff Law Group Endowed Law Scholarship, offered to two students every year, was created by alumna Brooke Goff, who is now a personal injury law attorney in Connecticut.
"She says she wants to help women and help LGBTQ law students through the scholarship," Bilger relays. "She donated a lot of money to the school. The problem is that it is discriminatory, according to this legal complaint."
In addition to praising and promoting the scholarship, the school reportedly plans to name the Ceremonial Courtroom the Brooke A. Goff Courtroom because of her donation.
Adam Kissel, a legal scholar who filed the federal civil rights complaint, points out that "the scholarship explicitly is to 'benefit women students,' excluding men in violation of Title IX."
"A law school should know better than to discriminate on the basis of sex," he adds.
As Bilger explains, Title IX prohibits educational institutions from discriminating on the basis of sex.
"That doesn't mean that you can't have a scholarship for women, but there also would have to be an equivalent for men as well," she notes. "The university did not respond to our reporters' request for comments. The lawyer didn't respond, either. The one who donated the scholarship basically went silent on it, so, we'll see."
Bilger says education needs to get back to focusing on merit.
