Posted on 04/07/2002 8:03:08 AM PDT by yankeedame
A coalition led by wrestling advocates has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education charging that its enforcement of Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in educational institutions receiving federal funding, discriminates against male athletes.
The National Wrestling Coaches Association ( which is financing this legal offensive) and others rightly claimed that the way the feds have administered Title IX has led schools to cut back men's athletic teams and scholarships.
Rhetoric to the contrary, Washington applies a rigid formula: If 51% of a studet body is male, then 51% of the institution's athletes must be men. Equal results, not equal opportunity for men and women to participate in athletics, is the Beltway's bottom line.
So if 40 men play on a college's baseball team, it'not enough to offer 40 spots for women's baseball: If fewer than 40 females take up the opportunity, the school is in trouble.
Thus schools feel it prudent to cut back on men's programs-- often wrestling, but also baseball, swimming and other sports-- rather than face Washington's wrath and the loss of federal money. For example, Marquette University had a wrestling program that was paid for by alumni, but school administrators banned the program anyway for fear of getting in the crosshairs of Uncle Sam's quota-loving enforcers.
May this suit restore sanity to an area that needs it.
The federal government--in similar cases--has used such facts as prima facie evidence of discrimination.
Eventually, I suppose, there will be press gangs to force women and blacks to major in engineering, and prohibitions against flunking them. Then they'll install them at desks with the name plate, "engineer", at which they will do nothing whatever and earn an engineer's salary.
--Boris
It won't, but there's no harm in trying.
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