WSU Offers Scholarship To Idaho Prison Inmate But Parole Board’s Decision To Keep Her Longer Will Delay Start

Washington State University has offered a prestigious Glenn Terrell Presidential scholarship to an inmate serving time in Idaho’s state women’s prison.

Charise N. Shively - 1979 Pullman High School student body president - had hoped to enter Washington State as a freshman this fall.

She was eligible for parole from the Pocatello Women’s Correctional Institution in May, but the parole board’s decision to keep her in prison for further counseling will mean the earliest she could enroll would be next spring.

Shively, 35, was sentenced to six years in prison in 1993 for shooting her former lover in the back while he slept. She was to serve a minimum of two years for that crime, and a minimum of three years of a seven-year sentence imposed the same year for “aiding and abetting a crime against nature.”

The sentences ran concurrently.

The second charge stemmed from an incident while Shively was out on bail for the battery charge. According to court papers, Shively and then-husband Carl Shively lured a 22-year-old University of Idaho student into a car in February 1993 and forced her to perform sex acts before beating the girl and leaving her face down on a rural Latah County road.

On Friday, Shively said she would not accept the Glenn Terrell Presidential Scholar in Residence Award, which would have given her $1,015 in residence hall waivers. Shively has three children and would not be living in a dormitory.

In a phone conversation, Shively blamed her crimes on “a culmination of 10 years of domestic violence.”

“I think my incarceration is perfectly justified and am happy to pay my debt,” she said. “But I’m kind of a different case. I had no criminal record until 5-1/2 months of a nervous breakdown. I have a lot of family support and, other than the period of my breakdown, I never had a problem with life’s responsibilities.”

The Presidential Scholar in Residence Award, one of three Glenn Terrell scholarships awarded to students entering Washington State each year, is “a highly competitive academic award,” said Johanna Davis, assistant director of the university’s Office of Scholarship Services. The 266 students who received the awards this year are “absolutely an elite group of students.”

Shively said she also has been offered a $500 scholarship from the university’s Department of Fine Arts, where she plans to study.

While in prison, Shively has studied sculpture in a program with other inmates. Her works, which Shively describes as “surreal from a feminist standpoint…depicting the child-mother bond,” have been displayed at Idaho State University.

Unless Shively wrote about her crimes in the essay accompanying her application, there would be no way for the scholarship committee to know about her criminal record, Davis said.

“When you have served your time and they have released you, you have the right to pursue life, liberty and happiness as much as the next person,” Davis said.

Shively said she hopes to earn a fine arts degree at Washington State and become a high school art teacher.

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