Cards Against Humanity Expansion Pack Funds Science Scholarship For Women
By Marielle Shaw in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 4, 2015 4:00PM
This week Cards Against Humanity debuted its newest expansion, The Science Pack, and we couldn't be more excited about their latest endeavor. Priced at $10 for 30 cards, the deck is a collaboration between Cards Against Humanity staff, authorZach Weinersmith and astronomer Phil Plait and will include all kinds of science goodies just waiting for a dirty double entendre (super-massive black hole, for example).
The best part? The proceeds from the Science Pack will go to fund The Cards Against Humanity Science Ambassador Scholarship. The scholarship aims to cover four years of tuition for one high school or college student who identifies as female and is seeking undergraduate degrees in science, technology, engineering and math, while also giving the student a platform via Cards Against Humanity's social media accounts and blog to share her ideas. So far, as of post time, over $268,000 has been raised.
The student will be selected by a board of 40 scientists, all of whom are women, and the scholarship form will be ready before the next college application cycle. While it seems everyone is thrilled to see a company support women in STEM fields, some are unhappy with the all-female board choice, including Janet Koster of the Association for Women In Science, who pointed out to the Tribune that “diversity and diverse teams make more successful decisions.”
Cards Against Humanity co-creator Max Temkin tweeted his frustration at Koster's comment, which prompted an article looking deeper at gender issues within STEM fields. Whether you agree with Koster's complaint or not, we think it’s important not to lose sight of the end goal. Whether the project changes to include men on the advisory board or not, we’re still on board.
Cards Against Humanity have proved themselves quite the humanitarians, giving back to local and national schools through Donors Choose in their 2013 ’12 Days of Holiday Bullshit’ campaign and donating $70,000 to the Wikimedia foundation in their inaugural year. They also started out their company as free to play and licensed their game under a Creative Commons license, so cool projects like this were possible.
If you’d like to be a part of their efforts (and part of the fun), click here to get yourself a shiny new expansion…for science!