/sarchasim
Posted on 06/09/2008 8:41:09 PM PDT by MovementConservative
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Oregon wrestlers have gone to court to save their program from being eliminated so the university can restore its baseball team.
"We don't want to see this program go away," said Ron Finley a former Oregon wrestling coach and now director of the Save Oregon Wrestling Foundation.
The foundation is one of the main supporters of a lawsuit filed last Friday in Marion County Circuit Court in Salem by Equity in Athletics Inc., a nonprofit coalition of athletes, coaches, parents, alumni and fans.
The complaint seeks a preliminary injunction to maintain the wrestling program while hearings are being held, leading to a decision by the chancellor of the Oregon University System, the parent for the state's seven public universities.
Finley and Lawrence Joseph, an attorney for Equity, said during a conference call with reporters on Monday they went to court as a last resort after the university failed to respond to their requests to reconsider a decision made last July by Pat Kilkenny, Oregon's athletic director.
Dave Williford, athletic department spokesman, said the university does not comment on pending litigation.
The university said last year it was restoring baseball for the 2009 season, 28 years after it last fielded a team in the 1980-81 season, leaving the Ducks as the only Pac-10 school without a baseball team.
But Kilkenny said Oregon was also going to drop wrestling following the 2007-08 season, suggesting baseball could be another moneymaker for the school.
Finley, a former Olympic wrestler who coached Oregon from 1970-98, said that he and other wrestling supporters believe Kilkenny simply decided to get rid of the sport.
"It really doesn't have anything to do with baseball," Finley said.
He said the Save Oregon Wrestling Foundation has raised at least $2.3 million to keep the program going, including a pledge to build a new practice facility.
Joseph, who has led legal battles to preserve athletic programs at other schools, said wrestling supporters got "the runaround" when they asked the University of Oregon to reconsider.
"That's why we're in court," Joseph said, "to get them to pay attention to us, and to preserve the program."
Supporters argue in their lawsuit the university failed to follow proper procedure and mistakenly claimed that the federal law known as Title IX — enacted to protect and expand women's athletic programs — somehow required the Ducks to drop wrestling in order to add baseball for men.
Joseph says the university has backed off that claim, but that means state law and the Oregon Constitution apply, and they protect the wrestling team.
"As long as they don't have to cut us federally, they can't cut us under Oregon law," Joseph said.
He compared it to offering Spanish classes at the university. If very few people applied to take the classes, or they were unpopular, the school could justify dropping them in favor of other languages.
But if school officials decided they simply liked French better than Spanish, and would fund only French classes, that would be illegal, Joseph said.
A hearing was set for July 7 before Marion County Circuit Judge Albin Norblad.
Oregon started its baseball program in 1876 and won the Pac-10 title 14 times.
/sarchasim
Gee, I can remember when differences could be resolved without a lawsuit. Then, law school suddenly became the way to wealth and riches. ;-)
Typical behavior by university administrations. I encountered a similar situation myself.
Ain't that the truth.
This is not one of those cases, but there are many articles on the ill effects of Title IX, and what it's done to universities in offering scholarships to elligible athletes for men's sports it can no longer carry.
This is a Title IX problem. Thanks to the feminazis, the girls have to have their sports.
I wonder if the desire to restore the baseball program was as a result of watching Oregon State win two straight national championships.
Title IX at its best - equity in sports funding. The university can't add a men's sports team without adding equal funding for womens sports. If they can't afford the additional funds for the new female sport, they must delete a male sport to free up the money for the new male sport.
Technically, the plaintiffs are correct in saying the university is not required to drop wrestling in order to add baseball for men. But they have no other practical choice, unless they can discover a pot of gold to pay for two new teams.
Sorry, wrestlers, the feminists have ****ed you but good.
This is why a lot of colleges have dropped non-revenue producing sports, and permitted the athletes to form ‘clubs’ instead. The ‘clubs’ can use university facilities and have a faculty adviser (coach?); but they are NOT college ‘teams’.
They compete against other ‘clubs’ from other schools.
The whole thing is a smoke and mirrors show to please the lawyers; I doubt it helps the students any and it probably is detrimental.
"Oh no!!! They Kilkenny!"
Doesn’t Title IX actually require equality of participation in sports based on male-female ratios of the student body as a whole, meaning that if insufficient numbers of females wish to partipate in athletics a sport favored more or less exclusively by males must be terminated in order to satisfy the Forced Equality bean counters?
Surely you jest. You aren't under the misconception that Title IX just applies to the athletic department. If BHO gets elected don't be surprised when the Department of Justice starts filing suits to enforce it on the engineering department, the computer science department, and the physics department. All of those programs have a noticable gender imbalance that disfavors women.
Those uniforms don’t do anything if the entire offense is built around one player who is then injured halfway through the season.
They need gender balance in the wimmins studies dept. When are half the perfessers going to be male?
When they dropped wrestling they added cheerleading.
Cheerleading as a sport!
Ed
Would not you be proud to have this fine group of athletes (a/k/a a$$holes) live next door to your Freshman Daughter's apartment in Eugene?
What is wrong with this picture of excellence?
That is pretty much on the money. I am not sure if the measure used is equality of money spent on male and female athletics or equality of number of male and female athletes or some other measure. But the overall effect has been to destroy a lot of mens athletic teams in the name of equality. Typical government one-size-fits-all interference.
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