Mah Noor, BMCC's Yale-Bound Valedictorian
This year's Borough of Manhattan Community College's Valedictorian is Mah Noor. Yale University has accepted Noor, 19, for the coming fall, and will be providing a scholarship that pays nearly all of her $80,000 annual tuition. At Yale she will major in cellular molecular biology and developmental biology. The first in her family to attend college, Noor plans to pursue a career as a pediatric surgeon. During her two years at BMCC, Noor maintained a perfect 4.0 grade point average while participating in cellular biology research under the mentorship of science professor Alexander Gosslau. She also remotely tutored low-income Saudi children in English.
Noor spent most of her early childhood in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. But in the 6th grade, she moved with her parents back to their native Pakistan. Six years later, in 2020, the family returned to New York City, and Noor enrolled in BMCC.
In an interview with the Trib, Noor spoke about life for women in Pakistan and her desire to be an example to others.
I think I only went out with friends once or twice in six years when I lived in Pakistan. The rest of the time I was with my family. When I came here, I thought, Wow, this is how it is, having the opportunity to explore. After years of being cooped up in a house, that came as a good surprise.
Even though we are progressing in Pakistan, women still struggle. We still have cases where 13-year-olds are married off to landlords, where a woman can't step outside the house without her husband's permission and are not allowed to talk to men who are not a family member. Oftentimes, daughters are seen as burdens.
When people get together, men and women eat separately and after dinner, women go to their own room to talk. After I turned 16, I was allowed to join them for the first time. That was the moment I discovered what women in Pakistan have to face. They talked about their husbands, or their brother-in-law or mother-in-law. How harshly and unfairly they were treated. How they are expected to cook, clean, and be a slave around the house. One husband slapped his wife who had forgotten to pay a deli owner for some milk. She was laughing. She said, “I'll never borrow again, he slapped me so hard.”
I was so shocked. I'll never forget that. The culture can have a way of manipulating its victims, for making them think that this is all that they're supposed to expect in life. It's even passed on to my generation.The boys my age, because they're not the oppressed ones, they're the oppressors. Their mothers coddled them and they’re brought up to think that how their fathers treat their mothers was right and they continue. Even though we are both educated and know it is wrong, we normalize it.
When I came here and had the opportunity to educate myself and be part of a society that welcomes equality, I realized that everything I was taught was not only wrong but it was a way to keep women as victims.
As one of the women from back home said that night, “Things will be different for my daughter. She will study and she will learn. Never will she have to go through what I have.”
I’ve had the privilege to educate myself, to understand that what’s being done there is wrong. I want to change that narrative. I want my education to be not just a step forward for me but for other women of my culture.