Wyoming Senate Votes to Terminate Funding for U. Wyoming Gender Studies Program
“This is an extremely biased, ideologically driven program that I can’t see any academic legitimacy to”
The best part about this is that the senators are coming right out and saying that the program is biased, political, left wing, and of no real academic value. Let this happen across the country.
The Hill reports:
Wyoming Senate votes to end funding for university gender studies program
Senators in Wyoming on Friday passed an amendment to the budget to terminate funding for the University of Wyoming’s Gender and Women’s Studies program over concerns that state dollars were being used to fund “biased” educational and extracurricular programs.
Republican state Sen. Cheri Steinmetz, who brought the amendment forward, said she had “lost sleep” after reading some of the program’s course goals, which included providing students with an understanding of queer, feminist and social justice theories to be applied to “service and activism.”
“And so, fellow senators I just have to ask you, what are we doing here at the University of Wyoming with these courses?” she said Friday on the Senate floor. “I would ask for your favorable consideration to direct our funds in a more appropriate manner for taxpayer dollars, and just vote your conscience on this one, because my conscience won’t let me sleep without addressing it here in this body today.”
The amendment ultimately passed in a 16-14 vote, with most other senators agreeing with Steinmetz that the university’s Gender and Women’s Studies program lacked merit.
“This is an extremely biased, ideologically driven program that I can’t see any academic legitimacy to,” Senate Education Committee Chairman state Sen. Charles Scott (R) said Friday. “I think we’ll hear complaints about how we’re interfering in the internals of the university, but I think what we’re really doing is sending them a message that they need to clean up their act in terms of the quality of the instruction that’s being given.”
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Comments
Thank you, Wyoming.
It’s a start. Now, finish off the rest of the grievance studies nonsense.
U of WY had been cutting back drastically on many of their programs, including some that are quite valuable to students. I’m glad to see them at least trying to identify useless programs.
On the other hand, cutting back on grievance studies actually benefits the students to encourage them into more productive areas. It will save students from spending four years in college and graduating with a degree that is useless.
Plus, many of them will now save money by spending only one year in college.
It will also rid the college of people who have no damned business being in college in the first place.
I am saying this from the perspective of someone who threw away his college time on a broadcasting and film major, but I am also willing to admit my grave error.
Funny thing about that major: I watched screen credits very carefully for years, and only saw two of my classmates in any credits. Two for one of them, and a single time for the other.
I think most college majors ending with the word “studies” are ideologically driven, biased, left-wing and of no real value.
I personally do not support intervention by the State Legislature in academic decisions. However, I support transparency and accountability by Boards of Trustees, who should not be captive of the College Administration.
If there are garbage programs in a state university, the answer should be to replace the Board and the President, and not to legislate course offerings directly. One person’s diamond is another person’s curricular diarrhea. There are so many ways to evade a statute or tie it up in judical review. A good Board of trustees can get to work right away.
The state is paying the freight, and he who pays the piper call the tune.
It wasn’t an academic decision, it was a funding decision. If the university wants to do the program without the funding, they could use bake sales or whatever and continue the program.
It’s not their job to fund things they don’t want. That would be slavery-ish. And it’s time the taxpayers stopped being slaves.
You cannot rely on boards to keep colleges honest. They are mostly captive boards that know only what senior administrators tell them. This is true even in a conservative state, such as the one that I live in. I teach at a public college, and our board is utterly worthless.
Yes, and in North Carolina we heard academics and politicians screaming bloody murder at the board trying to reign in craziness at the universities they oversaw. It’s a fight every step of the way against leftists, and they just keep on coming unless you can make them pay a price.