Reforming K Street

Words and Warriors

Web, Paper, iPod

The White House: This Reporter’s Beat

New Frontiers

Class Notables

According to Christine Gettings ’02, who spent a day shadowing Representative Janice Schakowsky (D-Ill.) as a WPI certificate student, this approach creates some unique opportunities. “Talk about access; that was access,” says Gettings on the experience. “I’d already interned on the Hill, but this was so different . . . I followed her to every meeting, we had lunch together. I could ask her questions. It was definitely more personal.”

The importance of networking

In politics, of course, it’s not just what you know that counts, but also who you know—which has long proved challenging for women. “If you’re going to serve in political office or even just work on the Hill, you need those contacts and connections,” explains Lisa Pace Vetter, who teaches WPI’s feminist political theory course.

When guest speakers like Pelosi or Hutchison come to WPI classes and events, O’Connor recognizes that they bring with them not only inside-the-beltway information but also inside-the-beltway connections. “We really stress the importance of networking,” she explains. “We encourage all of our students to come up to our speakers, to exchange business cards, to follow up.”

While the advisory board offers access to many of those “firsts,” the institute’s Young Women Leaders Board formalizes WPI’s commitment to networking and fills in the generation gap with a mentorship program made up of female congressional staffers, nonprofit professionals, and business women closer to the start of their careers. For Dana Begley ’04, one of the program’s first students, the formal networking opportunity has already paid off. Matched with the board’s chair, Jennifer Sarver, who then worked as a speech writer for Sen. Hutchison, Begley landed an internship and then a legislative correspondent post in the senator’s office. “Their guidance,” says Begley of the contacts she’s made through Sarver, “brought me to Capitol Hill.”

From seventh grade to federal court

Though the institute opened in 2001, for O’Connor its work has been nearly a lifelong pursuit. Long before she wrote the country’s most widely used government textbook or earned any of her half-dozen teaching and mentoring awards, O’Connor was just a seventh-grader unhappy with an assignment on New York state history. “I wanted to write my paper on a famous woman, but [my history teacher] said, ‘There are no famous women in New York state history,’” says O’Connor. “So I said, ‘Well, if I find one, can I write my paper on one?’”

Of course, O’Connor found more than one, but she settled on Susan B. Anthony, with whom, her research determined, she shares a birthday. “Well, if you’re in seventh grade, that’s pretty cool,” she recalls.

From such modest beginnings, O’Connor has gone on to argue in federal court against the Hyde Amendment (which banned public abortion funding in 1976) and testify on Roe v. Wade before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Yet she sees her biggest contribution to women’s rights in WPI’s efforts to kick-start careers for young women whether they be pro-choice or pro-life. “I knew from the start that if this was going to work, it was going to have to be bipartisan,” she explains. “My position is that we need to get more women at the table regardless of whether they agree on the issues . . . Our main goal is just getting young women to recognize the critical role that politics play in their lives.”

With the Supreme Court’s return to having only one female justice, O’Connor sees that recognition as more critical than ever. “Many of the education decisions for women have been five to four decisions,” she explains. “So we could see Title IX cut back . . . We could be where we were back in the ’60s, when we had to really engage.” But ironically, though she hopes young women don’t take their rights for granted, O’Connor is working to make sure they still can. “I don’t want women to walk into a job interview and be told, ‘Aren’t you lucky? You’re the first woman we interviewed’—because I was told that,” she explains.

After just five years, it may still be too early to tell whether the institute can have such an impact, but judging from the results so far, O’Connor is hopeful. “We’re still relatively new, but almost all of the graduates from our certificate programs have gone on to further their educations . . . or they’re working in congressional offices or with the parties,” she says with a smile. “In 10 more years, we’ll have them strategically placed everywhere.”

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