AUSTIN, TEXAS — A University of Texas at Austin student’s dreams of becoming a filmmaker have been shattered after being stripped of a scholarship following the Trump administration’s ban on transgender people serving in the military, according to a published report.
The UT-Austin student-run newspaper The Daily Texan profiled U.S. Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (AROTC) cadet Map Pesqueira, a San Antonio native who was awarded a national three-year Reserve Officers’ Training Corps scholarship to help fund his studies. But after Trump’s military transgender ban took effect last Friday, he is no longer allowed to serve in the military. As a result, his scholarship from the U.S. Department of Defense was voided.
Unable to afford tuition on his own, Pesqueira now fears he won’t be able to continue his studies.
Pesqueira has a condition known as gender dysphoria marked by discomfort or distress as a result of a patient’s disconnect between their biological sex and gender identity. Trump’s ban prohibits people diagnosed with gender dysphoria, those refusing to identify as their birth gender or who have already begun transitioning medically from serving in the military.
Alas, Pesqueira meets the ban guidelines given surgery, hormone replacement therapy, gender marker an a name change, he told the Daily Texan. “It’s made figuring out my future education so much harder,” he added.
Lt. Col. Mattherw O’Neill, UT-Austin’s Army ROTC department chair, tried salvaging Pesqueira’s scholarship by getting it “grandfathered” under the Pentagon’s 2016 policy hat lifted the ban, the newspaper reported. Ultimately, such efforts were unsuccessful.
O’Neill declined to comment further, referring questions to the Defense Department, which declined to answer questions. UT-Austin spokesman J.B. Bird also declined comment, citing issues related to privacy.
Despite the setback, Pesqueira said he still plans to pursue a military career upon graduating from college with a focus on achieving graduate school studies. He also dreams of achieving the rank of lieutenant should the police be reversed.
Until then, he’s created a GoFundMe page hoping to raise $20,000 to pay for his sophomore year in college that, at last check, had raised $11,592. “My life has definitely taken a negative turn because of this,” Pesqueira said. “I’m trying to put it back on a clear track, but that may or may not happen.”
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>>> Read the full story at The Daily Texan