This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, May 7, 2012 - Missouri state Sen. Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, has long been an outspoken critic of the Sue Shear Institute for Women in Public Life – a university-backed program that trains women to run for office. But she acknowledges that one Senate proposal goes too far by even barring the program from operating with private funds.
“I agree the language needed to be changed,” Cunningham said in an interview. “I agreed, for instance, that you can’t stop a private organization from doing what you (don't) want. In fact, that was my initial comment – it should be a private organization funded by donations and not by taxpayers.”
UPDATE: On Monday, the Missouri House voted 93-59 to bar any public college or university from offering educational programs -- including, but not limited to, the Sue Shear Institute -- that encourage women to run for public office.
“This is about keeping women barefoot, pregnant, in the kitchen and as far away from politics as possible,” asserted Assistant House Minority Leader Tishaura Jones, D-St. Louis. End of update
Situated at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, the institute was created in 1996 – and has been a political target almost from the start.
The institute was set up as a nonpartisan program to offer training and encouragement to women considering runs for public office. In March, for example, it issued a study focusing on the apparent decline in women seeking office in Missouri.
The institute receives $250,000 a year from the university, and it raises additional money through private donations.
Although it has had its critics from the beginning, the program became a political lightning rod shortly after it was renamed the Sue Shear Institute, in honor of Missouri’s longest-serving woman in state government.
Shear, who died in 1998, served 26 years in the Missouri House. She was a progressive Democrat who was a leader in the unsuccessful effort in the 1970s to win state approval of the Equal Rights Amendment to the federal constitution.
Some Republicans have asserted for years that the institute is primarily a training ground for Democratic women. Cunningham, for example, has asserted that the institute declined several years ago to provide campaign interns for her and another Republican legislative candidate.
Even so, the institute has had a cadre of Republican and Democratic women lawmakers who have participated in institute programs and supported its work. Such backers helped fight off previous attempts by some legislators or university curators -- most recently in 2005 and 2007 -- to cut off funding or dismantle the institute.
Broad language
This time, two provisions before the General Assembly target the institute.
One was placed into the state budget bill funding Missouri’s higher education institutions and programs. That provision says that “no funds appropriated under this section shall be distributed to or in any way support any organization that engages in political activity; including but not limited to, the Sue Shear Institute or its successor entity.”
The second amendment is much broader. It is in legislation dealing with state funding for veterans’ homes and early childhood education. That provision says “no public institution of higher education, or campus thereof, political subdivision, governmental entity, quasi-governmental entity, division, board, commission, committee, council, state department or agency, instrumentality, public office, employee of the state or private entity shall operate the Sue Shear Institute for Women in Public Life.”
The amendment also would prohibit groups whose operations track “the participation of women at various level of government” or seek to increase “the presence of women on boards and commissions,” train “college women leaders” or encourage “women to seek public office.”
Betty Van Uum, assistant to the provost for public affairs and economic development at UMSL (and a former Democratic member of the St. Louis County Council), said, “They did everything but take away the right to vote. This legislation would mean every college in the state would have to close if it can't train women to be leaders."
Even critics such as Cunningham are concerned that the second provision’s wording is too broad. The restriction against the institute operating as a private entity is seen by some on both sides as likely unconstitutional. Cunningham said she expects the wording will be changed.
Rallying support
Dayna Stock, manager of the institute, said it and its supporters are very concerned about the wording of the provision in the veterans-funding bill – as well as the overall attempt to eliminate the program or its state funding.
Stock emphasized that the institute is nonpartisan and that its aim is solely to encourage women to get more involved in public life and to offer training and education to that end.
She said the institute is “reaching out to supporters” to encourage them to lobby legislators to retain the institute.
Kristin Weber is a former Sue Shear Institute fellow who received a distinguished service award from the university on Friday. She established the UMSL College Democrats and served as its president.
The institute, she said, “helped me learn that there are many women out there who want to get involved in public life. It's not partisan. It's about getting out in the community and making a difference."
Weber now is trying to make a difference as well, by going online to lobby against the latest legislative efforts to kill the institute: “I have tried to start a social media uprising about it."
Beacon reporter Dale Singer contributed information for this article.
