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Home > Archive > Jul 26, 2007

Shawn Southwick-King Among New Trustees
By Cami Cox
Staff Writer
Among new members recently appointed to its board of trustees, Dixie State College now has some star power in its camp. Shawn Southwick-King, country music singer and wife of veteran CNN broadcaster Larry King, is among four new members of DSC's board of trustees, newly appointed by Governor Huntsman.
“I'm here to help the school. I'm here to help in whatever way that I can to make the school a shining star,” Southwick-King said. “St. George is getting ready to really explode, and I want Dixie College to be as amazing as it deserves to be.”
Southwick-King has many ties to Utah and the St. George area. Though raised in California, she attended college at Brigham Young University before leaving to sing backup on tour with the Osmonds. Her son Danny Southwick was a quarterback on Dixie State's football team up until last year, and she and husband King own a residence in St. George.
Since leaving DSC, Danny Southwick has gone on to play football at Occidental College in California, but it was his experiences at Dixie State that prompted mother Southwick-King to get involved with the school.
She learned of various problems at DSC that were occurring because of funding shortages. When traveling to away games, for example, she said, Dixie's football players had to sleep on the bus because the college couldn't afford other accommodations for them.
“The school just didn't have the funds to even put the kids up in a cheap motel while they were traveling on the road,” Southwick-King said.
Desiring to see changes made where funding and other matters were concerned, she contacted Dixie State president Dr. Lee Caldwell to discuss the problems and see what could be done to help.
“I didn't want to make Danny, my son who was on the team at the time, an elitist, I just wanted to stop the problem for everybody, if I could,” Southwick-King said. “So I called the president of the school and had a long conversation with him and said, 'How can I help?'
“Since I know the governor pretty well, he (Caldwell) said, 'Well, if you could just talk with him (the governor) and show him the difference between the money that's been allocated to Dixie State College as compared to the other state colleges.' – there was a great disparity in what Dixie was getting compared to the other schools,” Southwick-King said.
A family friend of Utah's governor, Southwick-King was a neighbor of Huntsman in Studio City, Calif., and was in a position to bring Dixie State's needs to his attention. She called the governor to discuss the issues and see what could be done to fix them.
“I called and I pled with the governor to at least take a look at the budget. He was getting ready to go in and start allocating funds, and he kept his promise to me,” she said. “I think Governor Huntsman definitely has his eye focused on Dixie for sure. His attention is there. He knows that it needs some help, and he promised me that he would take a look.
“And it's not special favors, it's just maybe he didn't know. He was handed a lot of stuff on a big platter. This is his first go at it, and I have every confidence in the world that he's going to guide this state and guide the educational system in a way we can all be very proud of.”
Now that Danny Southwick is no longer attending Dixie State, Southwick-King said she is able to help DSC as a trustee without the emotional ties that might exist were her son still a student. Working with the other trustees, she hopes to bring prestige and notoriety to Dixie and see it reach its full potential.
“There are a lot of high-profile people that are moving there (to St. George), and the opportunity for Utah to shine as a state is there,” she said. “But if our state college, Dixie, is rundown and under-funded, we're not going to shine. We're going to be stumbling along and doing the best we can to put Band-Aids on things that need surgery.”
“I look forward to getting involved and speaking with great knowledge and being able to bring more attention and more money to the school,” she said, “so that the students get the kind of education that they deserve. I think Dixie College has a lot of potential that is not being realized, and a lot of it is because of under-funding. Dixie College deserves more.”

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