Trump’s DEI ban forces SC girls school to cancel STEM day. ‘A lot of disappointment’
President Donald Trump’s ban on diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the federal government has caused a prestigious South Carolina all girls school to cancel a popular women in engineering day.
Ashley Hall, a Charleston private school founded in 1909, had planned to host its annual Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day on Feb. 21. But the school was suddenly told that its federal partners were unable to participate.
“I’ll say it was unexpected, there was a lot of disappointment... I think it’s one of the great things that we do at our school,” said Dr. Anne Weston, an alumna of Ashley Hall and the current head of school.
Since 2017, the school had joined with a group of federal agencies to introduce Ashley Hall’s upper school students to STEM fields and jobs in the federal government and armed forces.
Those agencies included the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Naval Nuclear Power Training Unit, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Naval Information Warfare Center Atlantic, National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The school pauses regular classes for half a day so that students can rotate through classes led by professionals from the different federal agencies and branches of the armed services. Students work on projects including plant and wildlife identification, experiments on the build up of toxins, storm surges and 3D printing while learning about jobs in science, technology, engineering and math fields from female scientists and engineers.
But these federal agencies were not allowed to participate or coordinate in events due to a President Trump’s executive order “terminating DEI in the Executive Branch, and the general pause on outreach initiatives,” said Dylan Burnell, a spokesperson for the Charleston District of the Army Corps of Engineers.
The executive order, signed the day Trump took office, required all executive departments and agencies to terminate all policies, programs, regulations and guidance related to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.
In its order, the Trump administration said that such policies “not only violate the text and spirit of our longstanding Federal civil-rights laws, they also undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system.”
The school specifies that the purpose of the day is to help get more women interested in STEM fields to help close the gap of female representation in sciences and engineering.
According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, women make up just 24% of the STEM workforce in the United States.
“Girls start losing confidence in math and science in upper elementary school. We are building confident learners by encouraging girls to see that there are all kinds of opportunities for them,” said Weston. “One of the beauties of an all girls school in their mind is that we can teach directly to the way that girls learn best and help then learn confidence.”
The school describes its mission as producing “women who are independent, ethically responsible, and prepared to meet the challenges of society with confidence.” It counts among its alumnae former First Lady Barbara Bush and billionaire CEO and philanthropist Martha Rivers Ingram.
As a result of the cancellation, Weston said that school has decided to “pivot” and will be hosting a panel presentation instead.
“We’ve had a tremendous outpouring of support from various constituencies and people who want to partner with us,” Weston said. “We want to very much stay mission focused on how we best serve our girls.”
This story was originally published February 12, 2025 at 12:00 AM.