When Jeffery Grimes 鈥�90 looks back on his time as a student at Colorado Law, he cannot remember a single other openly gay student and certainly recalls no formal support for non-heteronormative students. This experience, coupled with the controversial 1992 passage of Colorado's Amendment 2 prohibiting anti-gay discrimination laws in all of Colorado (including those municipalities that already had anti-gay discrimination laws in place), sparked in him a calling to LGBTQ+ advocacy.
Today, as the only member of the Law Alumni Board who identifies as LGBTQ+, Grimes has harnessed this passion to create a newly endowed scholarship to help defray tuition costs for gay, lesbian, and/or transgender law students.
鈥淸We] are more than twenty years past the 鈥楬ate State鈥� era,鈥� said Grimes, who serves as vice president, corporate counsel, and compliance officer at Astex Pharmaceuticals, Inc. 鈥淣ow there is an LGBTQ+ law student organization, OUTLaw. And gay people can legally marry. But the struggle law students now face is funding. The state legislature has regularly cut funding for the law school to the point where it is nearly as expensive as a private institution. In 2020-21, law school tuition and fees for a Colorado resident were $31,770 and $38,556 for a nonresident.鈥�
The scholarship, whose name comes from the lowercase lambda symbol adopted by the gay community in the 1970s to symbolize the liberation that is achievable through self-acceptance and activism, addresses both inclusivity and law school affordability.
鈥淚 cannot think of a better way to support my community and the law school than an endowed scholarship to fund LGBTQ+ students in a state that has had a dicey relationship with the LGBTQ+ community,鈥� Grimes said.