Rename Sarah B. Bryan Memorial Scholarship (Fire Protection Engineering, University of Maryland)

Please sign the Petition at change.org to rename the Sarah B. Bryan Memorial Scholarship, University of Maryland,

Department of Fire Protection Engineering

Thank You

https://www.change.org/NoChildAbuse

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The Sarah B. Bryan Memorial Scholarship at the University of Maryland (UMD) Department of Fire Protection Engineering should be renamed or discontinued. Sarah Bryan embodied values inconsistent with any ethical, self-respecting institution.

My father, John Bryan, set up the Sarah B. Bryan Memorial Scholarship in 1997 after my mother Sarah Bryan died from lung cancer following a quarter century of smoking. I knew about the scholarship at the time, though no one asked me about it or bothered to show me the materials they prepared, which I only found after John’s death and which present Sarah as an enlightened humanitarian, “friend, supporter and role model" for her children and rope me in as a character reference and supposed example of her wondrous "intelligence, convictions, courage and character".

This is bullshit.

Sarah was a bigot and a child abuser and a deeply destructive and unpleasant individual. She opposed the civil rights movement and school desegregation and liked saying that UMD admitted "too many black basketball players", that she was proud to be a "loudmouth white woman" and that Martin Luther King had "deserved" to be shot. She refused to read, cared nothing about the world, and refused to associate with anyone who did. She regularly criticized other UMD families behind their backs as "too smart" and "not normal". In my regard she was a nasty abuser with a complex about her own brother and did what she could – as incompetent as she was – to piss on my interests and education.

So be it.

Sarah was what she was and made zero effort to be anything else. Nor did she want to be anything else. If folks are into that, go for it. But don’t lie about it and don’t make up some boilerplate fiction that pretends otherwise.

Despite my asking them to stop, the Fire Protection Engineering Department continues to promote Sarah as a woman of "intelligence, convictions, courage and character", which is a gross distortion of who and what Sarah was. They have not corrected their use of bogus quotes and opinions about Sarah ostensibly credited to me.

There is no question of UMD returning the money. UMD should continue to provide scholarships as they see fit but without pretending that Sarah was something that she wasn’t and attributing quotes and opinions to me that are blatantly untrue.

Thank you.

Joan Bryan with 2016 recipients