Finally, some Title IX sanity.

1. People can disagree about Title IX without being either naïve or misogynistic. Playing the misogny card every time opposition to the current enforcement standards of Title IX is mentioned gets old.

2. As written, Title IX specifically prohibits proportionality (a quota system) to be used as a benchmark for compliance. Yet it is consistently and overwhelmingly used as the ultimate legal litmus test of compliance. The other two prongs are nothing more than window dressing, and someone as informed as you are about Title IX knows it.

3. Without proportionality, the male/female scholarship ratio wouldn't matter as long as schools offered enough sports to meet the interest at their particular institution, and made sure they all competed at the same level and received comparable institutional support. If the law was enforced AS WRITTEN, football coaches wouldnt' have to ask that their sport be considered as a "third sex" because it would matter that there is no corresponding 85-scholarship women's sport, as long as all women's sports needs were being met.

4. There is a perfect way to fix this. Create separate athletic departments at universities that sponsor intercollegiate athletics. Funding for compliance, academic suport, medical staff, facilities, etc., would come from a common budget. Everything else - scholarships costs, travel, coaching salaries, etc. - would be separate, and each department would have to live within its means. If there's a corresponding level of interest for sports bewteen men and women, the women's programs would have no trouble at all being self-sufficient. And then schools would be able to accept, for example, a $5 million facilities-enhancement private donation to the baseball program without having to spend a corresponding amount on softball, as is legally required by Title IX.

5. James Madison University has a far larger sexual discrimination problem than this. According to the 2000 census, the commonweath of Virginia is 50.8 percent female (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/51000.html). Yet the female-male student ratio at JMU is 61-39. It looks to me as if there's a definite pattern of historical institutional sexism at JMU that should be immediately addressed. ;D

 

This is an excellent topic for discussion because both sides have a tremendously valid point.

On one side, Title IX has been spectacularly effective in creating athletic (among other educational) opportunities for women. On the other, one would have to be spectacularly naive to believe that no men's programs have been cut because of it. It is entirely the reason, for example, that a nearby Division I university has women's teams in equestrian and rowing -- for which it has to recruit athletes from other sports and teach them equestrian and rowing -- but no men's track or cross country teams in an area that is among the best in the nation in high school track.

The question is how to balance the athletic demands and needs of both genders. That can be extremely difficult to measure, which is why most schools don't try to use that prong. If the use of a survey is flawed, as Cadet (and many women's advocates) suggests, because ``interest among current female students may not reflect interest among future female students,'' how then, does a school's administration prove it is meeting the interest of its students? And it seems that a school trying to meet the making progress prong must constantly be adding programs -- the status quo will never be able to satisfy that one. Proportionality is by far the most measurable and logistically attainable of the three, which is why most schools try to go that route, fearing legal challenges if they attempt the others.

Football is the No. 1 issue here, because without it, everything can be equal. It's why softball has more scholarships than baseball and women's track has more than men's track. And the fact that football revenue drives large school athletic programs makes it much more difficult to make any drastic changes to it. I think everyone admits that if you could simply exclude football from the equation, you would make things much simpler and -- other than football -- far more equitable for everyone. Then again, as Cadet correctly points out, football is not separate. It is a men's sport with huge participation and scholarship numbers.

The point of all this rambling is ... Well, I guess there really isn't one, because I don't know what the answer is. No one else seems to, either. As I recall, there was a high-profile commission assembled to figure all this out a few years ago,and after it issued its recommendations, about half of its members said publicly that they disagreed with the commission's findings, in some cases vehemently so. Maybe if we keep talking this through, someone will come up with an idea everyone can agree with.

Whew! Now I'm exhausted.

 

Oh, one more thing. Please, Cadet, don't take this is as a shot at you, but ``irregardless'' is not a word, it's simply ``regardless.'' Again, not a slam, just an anal editor-type trying to educate one and all regarding a pet peeve.

Carry on.

 

Football and Division I-A men's basketball are not "sports," intended for the recreational and physical fitness of ordinary students, but completely commercial public-relations enterprises designed to increase exposure of the university.

The athletes involved in such teams are not, should not be expected to be, and in some cases perhaps should not even be allowed to be, normal students pursuing traditional academic objectives. They are employees hired to perform a specific function for the university.

The funding, administration and operation of football and men's basketball should be conducted on a completely separate basis from all other sports.

All other intercollegiate sports activities should be funded on a 50-50 basis between men and women. 50-50. To the dollar.

 

There ya go, fixed.

I know that, I really do, but I claim exhaustion... ya'll should see me get fired up about Title IX when I'm well rested!

 

Cadet, I know this one is near and dear to you from this and past threads. And I like your point about football scholarships vs. roster size.

But to say there shouldn't be a compromise at all is one reason this is a problem. People on both sides refusing to bend, because from a certain point of view, they both have valid arguments.

And yes, I do have a very large problem with those 50-member women's crew teams handing scholarships to non athletes who never did a thing to earn their way until college while taking away scholarships from, say, the 60th man on the football team who has been working his ass off since he was a little kid.

The funny thing is, I'm a huge proponent of Title IX if enforced fairly and women's sports in general. I've probably covered more women's athletics than men's in my career.

 

Corresponding scholarships? No problem.

But artificially capping (or inflating) roster sizes for proportionality purposes is absolutely bogus.

 

And that disproves the whole "Title IX is killing men's sports" angle to this column. This was a budget cutting move, not a "fixing the Title IX ratio" move.

Didn't Iowa (or another midwestern school) try to blame Title IX when it dropped swimming a few years ago? But then somebody realized the money spent on the swim team was actually diverted to building a new weight room for the football team.

 

Actually, it doesn't at all. The programs eliminated cost very little, but were mostly men's programs. So JMU eliminated about 115 male athletes to become more in line with the proportionality prong of Title IX. The women's programs were added as window dressing. A lawsuit charging a Title IX violation will be filed, and the women's programs will be restored.

 

The fact that women's programs were cut does prove, yes, that Title IX was not the "culprit" here. This was a budget move, when you get down to it.

How they choose to make those budget moves, and comply with other NCAA regulations, as well as federal regulations such as Title IX, is up to the school. But this was a budget move.

 

If that's the case, why were three women's sports cut? JMU could have kept archery, gymanstics and fencing and just cut men's cross country, track (indoor and outdoor) and wrestling.

I think JMU just looked at the budget, decided it need to cut X from it and realized those three full-time and eight part-time coaches would fit the bill.

 

Cynical much? :

As was said earlier on this thread, schools have had 30 years to get into compliance with Title IX. If they're still "blaming" the law for their own mismanagement of the athletic department, that's their own damn fault.

Title IX has done 1,000x more good than bad when it comes to offering opportunities for women. The law is fine -- it's schools using the law as a scapegoat for their own issues that is a larger problem.