February 11, 2025

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What should the University of Wyoming teach? A Senate vote prompted a debate. | 307 Politics

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By every measure, Carlos Gonzales is the perfect example of academic success at the University of Wyoming.

Gonzales is the university’s top graduating male in 2021. Hailing from Buffalo, he is now in the process of obtaining his Ph.D. in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at Penn State. He was prepared to succeed in his doctoral program thanks to the “rigor and expectations” of his major: gender and women’s studies at Wyoming’s lone four-year university.

But for a time, it appeared the gender studies department might lose its funding.

The Wyoming Senate passed a Feb. 25 budget amendment that would have defunded the department. The amendment threatened three degree programs, dozens of courses, research ventures and multiple faculty jobs at one of the oldest gender studies departments in the nation.

On Friday, a compromise hatched in a legislative committee spared the program for the time being. But the Senate’s vote reverberated beyond the department itself, sparking a broader conversation about the future of education in Wyoming and the Legislature’s role in deciding what should be taught in the state’s classrooms.

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University of Wyoming

University of Wyoming students walk through the pasture to classes on Feb. 4 in Laramie. The Wyoming Senate voted last month to strip funding from the university’s gender studies program. But a decision on Friday will protect the program’s funding for the time being. 




Senate action

The budget amendment to strip UW’s gender studies program of its funding appeared on the Senate floor at the end of a grueling week of legislation, with lawmakers working to develop the state’s fiscal plan while contending with dozens of other bills. It was about 4 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 25, when Sen. Cheri Steinmetz, R-Lingle, rose to explain her amendment.

Framed as an effort to stop teaching UW students to be “activists,” Steinmetz’s amendment succeeded in a 16 to 14 vote. The amendment barred any “general funds, federal funds or other funds” under the control of the university for the purpose of “gender studies courses, academic 8 programs, co-curricular programs or extracurricular programs.”

Steinmetz portrayed the department as out of step with the values of the state that supports and funds the university. Learning what was being taught in the department caused her “to lose sleep,” she said.

The lawmaker highlighted some phrases on the department’s website and in its learning outcomes that she took particular issue with. “You will learn how to articulate the history, strategies, and goals of interconnected movements for social justice,” one states. Steinmetz noted another one that lists, “Translate feminist and social justice theories into service or activism” in its learning objectives.



Senate

Sen. Cheri Steinmetz watches the proceedings during a Feb. 11, 2020, legislative session in Cheyenne. Steinmetz sponsored a budget amendment to remove funding for the University of Wyoming’s gender studies program, prompting questions about the role lawmakers should play in the school’s governance.




“I don’t believe it’s an appropriate use of taxpayer dollars,” she said.

The department’s top official says senators focused on certain words but missed the larger picture of what the program actually entails.

“We obviously teach social movements because many social movements have organized around gender and sexuality,” said Dr. Michelle Jarman, director of gender and women’s studies at UW. “The bringers of this amendment are focusing on one word in the syllabus.”

Critics of the move, meanwhile, say the Senate was unnecessarily meddling in the university’s curriculum without taking the time to understand the department.

“This is a Senate that has decided that it wants to run full bore down the culture war road without acknowledging the consequences,” said Sabrina King, lobbyist for the ACLU. “They don’t have any clue what they’ve even done because all they care about is the culture war.”

The department

The gender and women’s studies department resides within the University of Wyoming’s School of Culture, Gender and Social Justice. The program consist of one major and two minors across the undergraduate and graduate schools.

In the last five years, the gender and women’s studies department graduated 81 students. In the 2021 fall semester, there were roughly 450 students enrolled in gender and women’s studies classes, including those that are cross-listed with other departments.

The advent of the women’s studies program started in the late 1970s with a few classes, and it was formalized into a major in the 1990s. The gender studies department also includes a “queer studies” minor, which began in 2007.



Jacquelyn Bridgeman

Jacquelyn Bridgeman, director of the University of Wyoming’s School of Culture, Gender & Social Justice, speaks during a Zoom panel about the school’s handling of a 2021 racist incident. 




The department has raised eyebrows before, Jarman said, but nothing as direct as the budget amendment.

Leaders of the program say the budget revision would have completely wiped out all funding for the department if it had been enacted. Jarman said that would have been “devastating.”

Jacquelyn Bridgeman, a law professor and the director of the Culture, Gender and Social Justice program, said that no one from the Legislature reached out to the department ahead of the Senate vote.

“It would appear that they have no idea what the content of the courses is,” Bridgeman said after the Senate’s vote, but before the legislative compromise. “They made assumptions, they didn’t talk with us to understand how courses are actually taught.”

University reaction

Santi Murrilo, a former UW student who minored in gender and women’s studies, said she didn’t understand why Steinmetz took issue with the department.

“I think they’re so afraid that people will stand against what they believe in and shut them down,” she said. “I’ve taken classes where I didn’t 100% agree with what was being taught, but that’s the point of university, you have to be open to other ideas. We’re in the Equality State, where women were first given the right to vote, are we not allowed to talk about that anymore?”

Gonzales, the 2021 winner of the Tobin Memorial Award as the University of Wyoming’s outstanding graduating male, pushed back on the idea that students were being forced to think a certain way.

“The professors were not actively pursuing any political ends,” Gonzales said. “We were never indoctrinated into some way or thinking or way of doing. What I did with those tools is beyond the control of those professors.”

UW student Riley Skorcz, who is majoring in speech, language and hearing sciences and has taken courses in the gender studies program, thinks legislators who supported the Senate amendment were “disconnected from their constituency and disconnected from the university.”

“I just wish that legislators would interact with the population that they’re affecting,” she said.



University of Wyoming

University of Wyoming students walk through the pasture to classes on Feb. 4 in Laramie. 




Actions like those in the Senate exacerbate the problem of young people leaving the state for opportunities elsewhere, advocates for the program say. Skorcz said she plans to leave as soon as she graduates, while Gonzales already has.

“I consider myself almost proudly part of this exodus, where I took the courses I wanted in order to meet my own needs, and as soon as I was presented the opportunity, I left to an environment where I don’t really feel threatened or that the topics are going to be controlled by some political motivations,” Gonzales said.

University of Wyoming President Ed Seidel and Executive Vice President Kevin Carman sent out a statement to the UW community following the Senate vote. In it, they said they disagreed with the Senate position and had “serious concerns of both practice and principle” with the amendment.

History

Steinmetz has spoken out before concerning the department. She expressed her opposition to the coursework at a Joint Appropriations Committee meeting in the fall, but had not formally taken action before the Senate amendment.

During the Feb. 25 discussion, she shared a handout with lawmakers that highlighted a number of department learning objectives that she took issue with, such as understanding “historical and contemporary context in which women, queer, and gender non-conforming individuals have exercised their agency” and connecting “crip, queer, critical race and ethnic studies approaches to place, environments, and the land.”

Steinmetz is known as one of the Legislature’s more prominent social conservatives, often weighing in on issues pertaining to the LGBTQ community.

In 2014, a municipal court judge in Sublette County made a statement to a local news outlet about her unwillingness to perform a same-sex marriage due to her religious beliefs. The Wyoming Supreme Court ultimately censured the judge for violating the state’s judicial code. Steinmetz was a vocal advocate of the judge and wrote a blog post for the Wyoming Pastors Network voicing her support in the context of religious freedom and free speech.

In the 2017 general session, she was the prime sponsor on a bill that would have allowed people to sue employers if their workplaces’ policies about LGBTQ workers conflicted with their religious or moral convictions. At the time, the American Civil Liberties Union said “the bill would legalize discrimination against same-sex couples and transgender people.”

The bill was eventually withdrawn by its sponsors.

In 2018, she also wrote that some proposed transgender protection policies conflict with “the overwhelming main stream majority of Goshen County and Wyoming Citizens” around the time that the Eastern Wyoming College Board of Trustees was voting on the measures.

Critics of the amendment saw it as representative of animosity toward the LGBTQ community.

“The [amendment] stands for something larger,” Gonzales said. “The bill signifies … Wyoming’s continual hatred against LGBTQ people.”

Steinmetz, however, denied that the amendment was about anything beyond addressing how taxpayer dollars are spent.

“This is an issue of the proper use of public funds,” she said in a brief comment to the Star-Tribune via text. “Nothing more.”

A relative rarity

Lawmakers have criticized university programs before. In 2017, Sen. Anthony Bouchard, R-Cheyenne, got into an argument with students over an academic project related to guns. The students said the senator threatened to end funding for their program, which he denied.

But university representatives say the Legislature hasn’t gone so far as to actually attempt to remove funding from programs it disagreed with until last month.

“I don’t remember seeing anything quite like this,” said Bridgeman, who’s in her 20th year at the school. “To do that kind of targeted legislation…that is pretty unprecedented.”

UW spokesperson Chad Baldwin also said that he couldn’t think of a specific example that matches the Senate’s actions, although he said that, over the years, there have been some concerns in the Legislature about certain activities at UW.

That said, the amendment used similar language to another gender-related amendment to the university’s budget dating back to the 2020 session.

Like Steinmetz’s amendment says, the 2020 amendment barred the school from using “general funds, federal funds or other funds,” but in that case the money was blocked from going towards elective abortions or group health insurance that provides coverage for students’ elective abortions.

Academic freedom

This session, lawmakers have pursued multiple measures that attempt to influence what’s being taught in Wyoming. The others have sought to bar the teaching of critical race theory in the state’s K-12 schools or require the disclosure of teaching materials on a website.

But some legislators see a difference between getting involved in the teaching of younger children and university students.

“When we send them to the university, you’re turning them loose. They’re adults,” said Sen. Drew Perkins, R-Casper, during the debate on the Senate floor. “You turn them out to be ready for an adult world, and you don’t have to agree with the point of view to learn about it.”

The amendment prompted a larger discussion about the Legislature’s role in the state’s academics system. Some legislators say their purview extends into the university’s instruction.

“Academic freedom’s been hijacked folks,” said Sen. Larry Hicks, R-Baggs. “It was never the intention that nobody else gets to weigh in on what we teach at the university, but it seems to be present that academic freedom means that if you’re not smart enough or intellectual enough and work for a university then you don’t get a say so in the process. Is that what intellectual freedom actually means?”



Charlie Scott

Sen. Charlie Scott, R-Natrona County, sits for a portrait at his home. Scott is the longest-tenured state lawmaker. 




Steinmetz referred to the handout she shared with lawmakers before the Senate vote and pointed to Sen. Charlie Scott’s testimony on the floor. The Natrona County Republican characterized the department as “extremely biased” and “ideologically driven.”

“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,” Scott said.

Perkins, who chairs the committee that drafts the budget bill, pushed back.

“That was the hue and cry just a couple years ago about what was happening on college campuses around the nation about providing safe spaces so people didn’t have to be exposed to certain points of view,” he said. “We were incensed at that. I was incensed at that. Well, this is just the other side of that coin.”

Perkins noted that lawmakers could wade into these waters. But he questioned whether they should.

“I still believe in limited government,” he said. “This is too much government for me. This is too much overreach.”

A compromise

The Senate doesn’t make budget decisions by itself. It must pass a state budget with the involvement of two other parties: the House of Representatives and the governor.

Because the House did not pass the same budget amendment, the matter — along with other differences — was sent to a committee of both senators and representatives.

That committee, of which both Perkins and Steinmetz are members, met Friday afternoon at the Capitol. Rather than pursing the Senate amendment, the panel decided on a compromise. The funding would stay.

Instead of removing the money, the committee voted to require the university to provide a report to two legislative panels on the school’s general education requirements, as well as any policies or regulations that incentivize or disincentivize students to take certain coursework outside of their majors.

“We reviewed it, discussed it, arm wrestled over it. We don’t want to blow up a $2.5 billion budget over a few words,” said Rep. Tom Walters, R-Casper, in a reference to the entire state budget.

While the program will keep its funding, the committee’s desire for the report suggests that at least some lawmakers are still curious, if not skeptical, about what’s being taught at the university.

The students in the program, meanwhile, remain on the sidelines.

Skorcz said she has been working on her class registration for next semester and is interested in signing up for several upper division classes that involve studying gender and social justice. As she registered, she wondered if she was signing up for classes that ultimately wouldn’t exist.

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