2016/02 The Sunflower Initiative Quarterly

Carol is the sister of Betty Littleton, a graduate of a woman’s college who went on to receive a Ph.D and then a J.D.  Find her statement of why she supports The Sunflower Initiative in this newsletter.  Strong sisters, strong women!

So when I entered a woman’s college in 1947, it was with shock and a sense of what we have come to call “empowerment” to discover that I was taken seriously and expected to make something of myself–of my own choosing.  My college was a small four-year school in St. Charles, Missouri.  It had begun in the early nineteenth century as an academy for young women but quietly and persistently had evolved into a haven and a beacon for young women who hoped for more for themselves.  

Many of our faculty were women who had forged their way, mostly unwelcomed, into universities tailored to the needs and interests of young men.  Many had been the first women to graduate from their institutions, and though they bore their battle scars lightly and without rancor, their lives were informed by their determination to excel and make their own way. Their earnestness and professional commitment, along with their unconditional belief in us, were a revelation. I remember seeing my first academic procession, hearing my first convocation lecture, having my first conversation with a faculty adviser whose palpable erudition and confidence in her own worth was startling. The women in my own family were strong and wise and sophisticated, but they were outwardly retiring and submissive.  These faculty women were nothing like that, and I wanted to be like them.

I am grateful for having been directed to a woman’s college. The faculty took me seriously.  It cared about what I thought and why. It cared about what I expected of myself.  Because we were all women, we had ample opportunity to exercise leadership, compete with each other, and excel without apologizing for ourselves.  These are old values but they have served me well.  In these later years women’s colleges, informed by the feminist movement of the 1970’s and 80’s, are more sensitive in matters of curriculum that embody and reflect female experience.  They are bolder in what they believe is possible for their students after they graduate and better equipped to educate the “whole” woman.  Even so, I think they cannot do much better than my faculty did many years ago, offering young women a place apart from the marketplace and the world to find themselves, to formulate a plan for productive and full lives and to acquire a core of knowledge from which they can, if they will, find a wisdom that endures.

The founders of the Sunflower Initiative are perpetuating a tradition which every young woman should have an opportunity to choose. I support and honor it.