Don't "Shut Up" the Women's Research Institue

I teach English 150.

For all of you wonderful BYU students out there who have taken the course, you will be familiar with the opinion editorial assignment. I tell my students that the best opinion editorials are ones that deal with issues they care about—things that they really feel something about. Even though I assign this to my students, it has been a very long while since something at BYU has riled me up sufficiently to truly want/need to write about it. That is, until this week.

The Women’s Research Institute, established in 1978, is being dissolved. And I still can’t figure out why. According to a press release, the move was made to “streamline and strengthen” BYU programs in women’s studies. I won’t even get into the masculine, linear thinking that he word “streamline” might paradoxically entail in this situation. The real question I am still asking myself is “what is that supposed to mean?”

The fact that the institute is being dissolved doesn’t bother me as much as the implications of “dissolving” an institute that is wholly committed to studying women, and women’s issues. Don’t we learn in church that women and men are equal? Don’t we learn that women are not only productive and useful members of society but essential to a society’s success? And, may I ask, doesn’t the church struggle projecting this image to the world—the fact that women in our community are treated fairly? If we eliminate a program that was meant to bring light to gender issues, to put them out in the open and to open a dialogue—what are we symbolically saying? Or, to carry the symbolism further—aren’t we just “shutting up” the issue? It seems as if we are silencing what the institute was meant to accomplish, and therefore (symbolically) women. Not a good PR move, in my opinion.

I ask my students to always consider counter arguments in their opinion editorials—to always consider the “other side of the story.” How can I do that here? What is the other side of the story? I want it! I need it! I need to feel like I’m being responded to as a concerned member of this university community. That is not happening, though, Not at all. This is my challenge: respond to me. Respond to this woman who feels like she just got slapped in the face by the university she loves. Respond with specific reasons as to why this is happening. Tell me how taking out the collaborative efforts of faculty members and research concerning “women” will help “streamline and strengthen” efforts around this university. Give me a straight-forward answer. Give me the facts. Tell it to me like it is. That is what I demand. Then, maybe I’ll be able to sleep better at night. I’ll feel like (my voice, at least), has been heard.