U.S. Defends Anti-Bias Law on College Sports (Bush fails to challenge Title IX rules)

New York Times ^ | 5/30/02 | TAMAR LEWIN

[Right Wing Professor]

The Bush administration expressed at least limited support yesterday for the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in college sports, asking a federal court in Washington to dismiss a lawsuit by coaches of men's college teams who said enforcement of the law was hurting opportunities for male athletes.

The National Wrestling Coaches Association filed suit against the Department of Education in January, saying the guidelines for a federal law known as Title IX discriminated against low-profile men's sports.

Since then, alumni and student groups from Marquette University, Bucknell and Yale have joined the suit, charging that the Education Department's enforcement of the law has produced reverse discrimination, forcing budget cuts and reducing athletic opportunities for college men in sports like wrestling, swimming, gymnastics and track.

Over the last week, Washington has been awash in rumors that the Bush administration is preparing to rethink its Title IX enforcement, with an eye to softening the requirement that women's sports receive financing in proportion to the percentage of women on campus. In yesterday's filing, though, the Justice Department gave no sign of any such plan.

Instead, the government filing raised only procedural problems with the lawsuit, arguing that the case should be dismissed because even if some universities wrongly eliminated men's teams in their efforts to comply with Title IX, only those institutions — and not the court — could reinstate those teams. The government also said the lawsuit was barred by the statute of limitations, since it challenges actions taken by the Department of Education more than six years ago.

Women's advocacy groups said they were troubled that the government brief offered no praise for Title IX, which in three decades has increased women's participation in college sports to 157,000 female athletes from 30,000.

"It would have been common for the government to signal its support for Title IX, even if the case was so flawed for procedural reasons that it should be dismissed," said Marcia Greenberger of the National Women's Law Center, in Washington. "We're disappointed by the silence."

Since the passage of Title IX in 1972, the General Accounting Office has found, more than 170 wrestling programs have been eliminated, along with 80 men's tennis teams, 70 men's gymnastic teams and 45 men's track teams.

Over all, the number of men playing college sports has remained relatively stable, at about 200,000.

This month, the men's track and field teams at Vermont, Tulane and Bowling Green ran their final races, and people like Ed Kusiak, who has coached track at the University of Vermont since 1969, resigned themselves to having only a women's team.

Under a 1995 court ruling, universities could show they were in compliance with Title IX by meeting what is known as a proportionality test — that is, showing that their ratio of male to female athletes was nearly equal to their overall ratio of male to female undergraduates.

[Right Wing Professor]

Looks like the high hopes I expressed in a previous thread were unfounded. Bush has let us down again. I keep trying to imagine how much worse it would have been if Gore had been elected, but it's getting harder and harder all the time.

[GraniteStateConservative]

For someone who's such a supporter of the Constitution, do you understand he's required to execute the laws of the land? Bush and Ashcroft may hate this law, but there isn't much they can do. If you hate the law-- get Congress to write a new law to revoke it.

[Right Wing Professor]

The law of the land is the 14th amendment, which mandates equal protection, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which forbids discrimination based on sex. the current rules by which the Department of Justice enforces Ttile IX are not statutory, they're executive. Bush, as he did in Adarand, is standing up for executive branch rules which violate the law of the land.

By all means try to defend him on grounds of political expediency. But don't claim he's adhering to laws which he's directly contravening.

[FreePaul]

Bush has let us down again.

Get used to it . I think that it has something to do with the last name. I don't think that anyone in the family understands why people voted for them once.

[FreeTally]

Since the passage of Title IX in 1972, the General Accounting Office has found, more than 170 wrestling programs have been eliminated, along with 80 men's tennis teams, 70 men's gymnastic teams and 45 men's track teams.

I suppose that these programs that were eliminated were at small colleges and universities. I'd be curious to know if any major Division I colleges or universities have cut these programs to be able to keep the number of scholarships for Football, Baseball, Basketball and Hockey.

I think at many colleges and universities, there would not even be funding for women sports if it was not for the huge amount of money that football and basketball rake in.

[Right Wing Professor]

Nebraska is a Division I school, and we eliminated wrestling and men's swimming. Of course our football program pays for all the other men's and women's programs combined.

[drjimmy]

The law of the land is the 14th amendment, which mandates equal protection, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which forbids discrimination based on sex.
That is exactly why the lawsuit won't win. Title IX simply applies the 1964 Civil Rights Act to "any educational program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance." The suit needs to be filed against the schools that are dropping men's sports, because it is they who are doing the discriminating, not Title IX. Because football coaches are more powerful than college presidents, the schools would rather drop wrestling and track than force the football team to operate with less than 105 members, of whom maybe half ever play in a game.

[Nonstatist]

Here is the WSF (feminazis) response to the gov't action re: Title IX..

...................

WOMEN'S SPORTS FOUNDATION REACTION TO THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION MOTION TO DISMISS LAWSUIT BROUGHT BY WRESTLING COACHES ASSOCIATION

May 30, 2002

"We are distressed that the government's May 29, 2002 motion to dismiss the Wrestling Coaches Association's lawsuit did not make a clear statement that Title IX regulations are legal and valid. The government simply told the Wrestling Coaches Association to sue the colleges and universities that discontinue their sport. The Administration is not sending a clear message that Title IX is valid and legal and women are entitled to full and equal rights to participate in federal funded education programs and activities. We believe that the Wrestling Coaches Association legal action has no merit whether they file against the government or institutions of higher education," stated Julie Foudy, President of the Women's Sports Foundation.

Thirty years after Title IX has passed, women still receive 30% fewer sports participation opportunities (1.1 million less opportunities at the high school level) and $133 million less in college athletic scholarships.

Contrary to the impressions being created by the Wrestling Coaches Association's lawsuit, men's sports participation opportunities today are higher at both the high school and college level than they were when Title IX passed in 1972.

1972.......... 2001

High School Male Athletes ....3,666,917..... 3,921,069
College Male Athletes (NCAA) ....170,384....... 208,866
High School Female Athletes .....294,015 ......2,784,154
College Female Athletes (NCAA)..... 29,977....... 150,916

- N.F.H.S.A.A. and NCAA Participation Statistics, 2001

"At the heart of the Wrestling Coaches Association lawsuit is an extremist position proffered by various groups who want the public to believe that girls are not as interested in sports as boys and therefore should not receive an equal opportunity to play. We are to believe that there are not enough girls among the 2.7 million females playing high school sports who are interested or skilled enough to fill the 150,000 available participation opportunities at the college level. They are using the political hot button label of "quota" to describe the proportionality option which may be used to demonstrate compliance under Title IX participation requirements, despite the fact that it is only a mathematical option as opposed to a requirement. The public should know that two-thirds of the schools investigated by the Office of Civil Rights have reached compliance without using proportionality or the mathematical safe harbor it provides.

The Wrestling Coaches Associations lawsuit does nothing more then pit the "have-nots" (wrestlers whose teams have been dropped) against the "have-nots" (women who are still not getting equal participation opportunities and benefits).

Expenditures in men's football, basketball, and at some schools men's ice hockey, continue to sky rocket and the losers are our sons and daughters who participate in Olympic sports being eliminated and our daughters who still are not getting their fair chance to play. We can afford to maintain our exciting football and basketball programs, keep all men's sports and to add new women's sports if we exercise fiscal restraint and support each sport with a smaller piece of the budgetary pie," stated Donna A. Lopiano, Ph.D., Executive Director of the Women's Sports Foundation.

The Foundation calls on college presidents and athletic directors to control the excessive cost of intercollegiate athletics and make a commitment to maintaining high levels of college sports participation.

"Especially in Division I, if the current expenditure spiral continues, we will be left with small, highly commercial sport programs, a continuation of the embarrassing graduation rates in men's football and basketball and be subject to the rightful criticism of an American public who believes that professional sport is the business of the NFL and NBA rather than our academic institutions," stated Dr. Lopiano.

[Nonstatist]

Here is a point by point refutation, from an "interested" observer..........

The basic arguments from women's organizations are as follows:

1) Men's sports continue to grow on the whole.
2) Women are still "unequal" in treatment on the playing field.
3) Title IX Rules Interpretion doesn't force anyone to obey prong I..
4) Football is to blame. .
.
Each of these arguments is bunk.

While each are true to a certain extent, each misses the larger picture.

Argument one is misleading because population growth isn't considered. While men's athletics have increased a measly 1% in 25 years, the U.S's total population has increased by 36%. 250,000 more male high school athletes out of 35,000,000 more males. The percentage of males who play sports, out of the total male population, has dropped, not risen.

Argument two runs wrong as well, because it does not factor interest into account whatsoever. Men may lead females in total number of participants in athletics, but women lead men in just about every other conceivable extracurricular activity, including cheerleading, choir, band, acting, yearbook, honors society, debate team, journalism, creative writing and orchestra. The only category that men lead women in is athletics. Even on the club and activity level (where students play purely out of a desire to do so) this statement is overwhelmingly true. Can't we just accept the differences between the sexes and realize that men like sports more, and women like just about everything else more? Must women lead men in every conceivable category of interest?

Argument No. 3 is bunk because the second prong of the Title IX Rules Interpretation is slow movement towards the first prong. What's the difference between a slow implementation of bad ideas or a fast one? The government has set up no way to measure student interest, so prong three is irrelevent also. Thus, a constant motion towards prong I is title IX's Rules Intepretation's only result.

Finally, the argument that football is to blame is also false. Yes, oftentimes athletic directors are forced to make tough decisions, but it is Title IX that forces them to do so. Marquette wrestling is a great example: the team was totally self-sufficient, made money for the college, and was an academic success, but still had to be cut in order for Marquette to schedule games in Conference USA, thanks to Title IX's rules interpretation. One cannot blame football for being more popular than other sports, when it is the Title IX Rules Interpretation that forces ADs to have to make such a choice.

In closing, I hope the NWCA wins and a new interpretation is settled upon. Schools simply should not be forced to proportionate and interest should be taken into account.

[Right Wing Professor]

Football is only to blame for the other programs going away if you insist on strict proportionality. That's nonsense. Men on average have a far greater interest and participation in sports than women; there's no more reason to expect equal numbers of male and female college athletes than there is equal numbers of male and female physicists.

As it happens, on this campus, as at many other major college programs, football pays for all the other men's and all the other women's sports. While Lopiano and her ilk can attempt to put the blame on football, if we closed the football program tomorrow, women's soccer would be gone the next day.

[Nonstatist]

Thus, every male athlete who does not play football or basketball adds an athletic position that has to be offset with a women's program.

Why? Says who? Where is that written in the original Title IX legislation written and passed by Congress and signed by the President? Its nowhere in there; Ive read it several times

Instead, that it is the Clinton Administration interpretation of that legislation. Why cant there be more mens athletic spots than women? Do men and women have exactly the same intensity of interest in everything ? There are more women theater , dancing , cooking, literature, teaching, singing , acting students than men, you know. Should we rectify that also through quotas?

Again, the basic question is, how does eliminating wrestling assist women in participating in sports? I'm talking walk-ons, not scholarships.

If you live by quotas, and you can see that women have 30 % fewer participants than men, then it is obvious that wrestling , gymnastics, swimming and maybe baseball positions will have to be eliminated, maybe completely in one or 2 sports. Please explain to me how this is not reverse discrimination and how keeping these basically cheap activities (wrestling is CHEAP) gets in the way of womens participation.

[Nonstatist]

the booster clubs could decide what sports to have without the use of student fees, college financed facilities, or scholarship money.

You think women's groups will like that idea? You'll have less women on college athletic clubs than you had on college teams in 1972.

Problem is, people conflate their hatred of big money college sports with Title IX, which mostly addresses the little walk-on student athlete as opposed to the far less numerous scholarship recepients.

IMO, if you are proposing to get rid of college sports, shouldnt you also get rid of theater, dance, culinary arts , art, etc ? Are those things any more "scholastic" than athletics ?

[Right Wing Professor]

Look at the reporting on football. At most schools, football is a money loser and is supported by donations and student fees (Just look at the Tank McNamara cartoons from a week ago). US News ran a story that showed that in the year that the University of Colorado won the NCAA title in football, the football team lost money.

I think that by all means, in those cases where the football program is a money-loser, the university should consider shuttitng it down. If you apply this same logic to women's sports, though, I'd wager you'd shut down every scholarship program in every sport.

Colorado is a non-typical example: they came out of nowhere to win the 'national championship' (there isn't an NCAA title in football) and I'm pretty sure they make money now. Nebraska rakes it in even in the occasional year we don't finish ranked Number 1. We've sold out ever y seat for every game since 1966, we've sold out our $1.5 million a year sky boxes for the next 25 years, so we're going to make money for the forseeable future. Yet we have to keep closing men's programs, not because we can't afford them, not because there isn't interest in them, but because of Title IX.

[Right Wing Professor]

It depends. Turns out that at quite a few public universities, the conference eligibility requirements are higher than general admission requirements. We have effectively no standards for African American students - if they can fill out their name on the form, we'll take them - but our football players have to meet Big XII standards. Our football players graduate at a higher rate than the student body.

Of course, I imagine it's different at Northwestern. ;-)

[Nonstatist]

But what is your solutions? Forcing a university that is 65% female to support mens athletics because non-students think that football is important? Is it right to "tax" female students with athletic fees so that there can be a men's wrestling team even though fewer people watch it versus women's basketball?

Should men be taxed to support a dance program that is 98 % women? Or an arts program or theater program? Shall we have nazi gender counters in every class? A wrestling program costs virtually nothing. Many colleges have women scholarships that go unfulfilled, yet hundreds of students are kept off sports because of quotas (Maryland U, for ex)

Also, for most women's sports, the university generally does not have to lower its academic standards to admit athletes but for men's sports is definitely has to lower its standards. Isn't that another "tax" on the women at any university?

The "quality " of non- scholarship male athletes is just as high as "non-scholarship" female athletes, from what I read. Oh, and my understanding (from a recent WSJ article) is that the recent proliferation of female scholarships has resulted in a class of "sub" standard female athlete-students, a phonomenon paralelling mens sports.

You know, personally, I could give a sh*t about football or football scholarships and would be happy not to see the latter, but thats what the alumni who shell out big buckaroos to the athletic departments of many colleges want (the same AD that funds female sports that nobody watches)

If you separate the university from the sports, then the federal rules would no longer apply. And yes, compared to music and theater, sports are much less an academic pursuit.

Oh, you're the authority on that? If theres little redeeming about athletics then why the huge imperative by women's groups to get women in the act?

The quality of the male athletes versus the student body at almost all universities demonstrates that.

So you dont like male athletes, what a surprise. And what if it turns out you have female lacrosse players on scholarship at NC State and Duke who do nothing but "play" all day long, not going to classes at all? You want to stereotype all female athletes the same way?

Look, I don’t have much use for huge scholarship programs either , but if it’s the goal of the gender benders to marginalize college football, theyre going to have to have a mandate from Congress first. Football is HUGELY popular, but the way to get knock it down should not be by eliminating wrestling, swimming and gymnastics.

Oh, and IOWA wrestling matches often draw thousands and thousands of people for normal events. How many women's programs do that?

[PBRSTREETGANG]

1. The number of football programs that make money is probably less than 20.

I don't believe the numbers are that low. Maybe by the same accounting methods which Steinbrenner & Selig used to demonstrate that the Yankees barely broke even last year.