Queens College pro-life students keep running scholarship for moms post-graduation – The College Fix
A few years have passed since a group of students decided to start a pro-life chapter at Queens College, but their efforts continue to have a lasting effect.
Now, one of the since-graduated students continues to be involved in a different way — as founder and leader of the Kathleen Mullally Foundation, a scholarship program for pregnant and parenting college students.
Her name is Josephine Rose and she spoke to The College Fix on Oct. 2 about her organization’s journey.
“Back when I was an undergraduate at Queens College … I was working with one of my good friends” on pro-life advocacy through a Students for Life chapter, she said.
“We really wanted to make a scholarship to help pregnant parenting students,” Rose said. “We felt it was really a cornerstone of our mission as pro-life advocates to not just … advocate for the unborn but also for their mothers and to help them achieve their goals.”
“It’s really important to me personally that we accompany them beyond the delivery room,” she added.
Rose is still running the foundation although she is no longer a student. This spring, the foundation gave out three scholarships for the semester. So far, eight women have been helped. The scholarships are open to college students in New York.
“These young women are so brave and they’re so courageous. They have just heartbreaking stories,” Rose said.
“We had a young woman from Jamaica who came to New York paralyzed from the waist down so that she could be treated for her condition,” Rose told The Fix. “[She] had to completely learn how to walk again [and] started going to college. And then she became pregnant.”
The idea for the foundation began more than five years ago while Rose was still a student.
Her roommate at the time, Norvilia, suggested they create a scholarship to help pregnant and parenting moms at their Queens, New York school.
The college was receptive and told them they would need to raise around $20,000 to make the program into a recurring scholarship, Rose told The Fix.
“I said ‘okay, that’s a big ask’, you know. How are we going to raise $20,000? And I went back home and talked about it with my family and my dad said, ‘Joe, you won’t have any problem raising that but why give it to the college because then you would have no control and once you leave they can do whatever they want with it?’ And I said, ‘You know, that kinda makes sense.’”
While she wouldn’t say the school was “closed to the idea,” Rose said: “No one came to me and said ‘Wow, that’s a great idea. We want to help you make this happen.’ That was not the reception that we had in general with the pro-life group’s other activities. They were not pleased with us being on campus.”
Rose’s roommate was president of the Students for Life group at the time, and “she actually had to sue Queen’s College to be allowed to have a chapter because they said there’s no need,” Rose said.
As for the scholarship, Rose said she “decided to do it basically with my personal family and just make it a private scholarship.”
“We raised like $15,000 almost immediately. It was incredible,” she said.
Since founding the scholarship, which is named after her aunt, Rose became a music teacher and started a family of her own. “It’s kind of like my side gig,” she said.
“I love to be able to meet people and give them a reception and hand them their check myself personally,” she said.
The scholarship is restricted to students in New York, but major and school don’t matter.
Whether the student attends a liberal arts college or a vocational school, Rose said, “Our goal is pretty much to support young women who decide to go through with an unplanned pregnancy.”
“I’ve been increasing the amount every year to keep pace with … [the] increasing cost of tuition,” Rose told The Fix.
Although the scholarship money is intended for tuition, students can also use it for other living expenses.
“For example, I had a student … who was living in a homeless shelter with her three children so she was able to pay her first month’s rent,” she told The Fix.
“We have another young woman who had three small children and had been in the military, and she, for whatever reason, had to leave her spouse and wound up in a domestic violence shelter with her three children and she put herself through college [and] got a second degree and I’m pretty sure she’s now working as a counselor,” Rose said.
Students for Life spokesperson Jordan Butler emphasized the importance of supporting parents in college in a recent interview with The College Fix. The organization has more than 1,500 student-run pro-life chapters at colleges across the country.
Across the country, other campus pro-life groups also are offering support to help pregnant and parenting students. One example is Choose Life at Pitt, a group at the University of Pittsburgh that threw a baby shower for a student in the spring.
Students for Life’s Standing With You project supports pregnant and parenting students and helps with natural disasters. But Butler said student pro-life groups are encouraged “to do the same on campus, and they are rockstars!”
“Many times, a mother needs support when she’s pregnant, especially if she’s still in school. We believe in loving them both and are so proud when our students and staff step up to the plate and do just that,” Butler said.
MORE: San Francisco State U. opens family study room for parenting students
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