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TASK FORCE MEDIA NOTES
TASK FORCE MEDIA NOTES
VOL. 2, NO. 2 (January 23, 1998)
This is part of a series of regular reports
to update, inform, educate and stimulate public discussion
SPORTS ILLUSTRATED POINTS OUT THE PROBLEM WITH PROPORTIONALITY
In the December 29, 1997 issue of Sports Illustrated, the following
item was included in the Scorecard section:
“This Week’s Sign That the Apocalypse Is Upon Us. Ordered by a federal
judge to equalize facilities for boys’ baseball and girls’ softball,
officials at Merritt Island (Fla.) High disconnected the electric
scoreboard, closed the concession stand and roped off some bleacher
seats at the boys’ field.”
Anyone can see that this is wrong and ridiculous. That’s why Sports
Illustrated chose it for the “Apocalypse” note of the week. The reason
that this is such an outrageous action is because it so very clearly
demonstrates what is wrong with proportionality in practice.
Proportionality, which is simply a gender quota, stipulates that it
does not matter if you increase opportunity for women or not. All that
matters is that you reach a numerical equality for women and men, in
participation slots, funding or facilities. Therefore, proportionality
is achieved if you cut opportunity for men in order to reach an
artificial equality.
It does not matter that the funds for the boys’ baseball field
improvements were raised in the community by the booster club, through
donations and from event receipts over many years. All that matters is
that there is equality. And since Merritt Island High School did not
immediately have funds for improvements in the softball field, all that
was left to do was to wipe out the improvements in the baseball field.
This is the kind of havoc that the hard-line proponents of
proportionality are causing in the United States, in the name of Title
IX. It has happened in colleges for many years and is now coming to your
local high schools. Isn’t time for the insanity to stop and a more
reasonable interpretation of the federal law used?
SEVEN CAL-BAKERSFIELD WRESTLERS REINSTATED AFTER COURT DECISION
There is some good news for those seeking sanity in the legal
interpretation of Title IX coming out of California. In the January 16
issue of the Bakersfield Californian, journalist John Bryan reports the
following:
“It took 23 days and a blizzard of memos, but seven Cal-State
Bakersfield wrestlers cut from the team in November to help CSUB meet
gender equity requirements have been invited to rejoin the squad after a
federal court ordered their reinstatement last month.”
The wrestling team at Cal-State Bakersfield has been battling for
survival for a number of years. The university has indicated that the
wrestling program was scheduled for elimination due to the Cal State
University consent degree with the National Organization for Women. This
new ruling by a federal court not only helps in the battle against
proportionality, but also takes a major step to eliminate the
destructive use of roster caps as a method of Title IX compliance. The
true winners in this situation are the young men whose opportunity to
compete had been denied.
In the article, Bryan interviewed freshman Nick Bradley, one of the
wrestlers who was allowed to rejoin the team after the court ruling. The
article continues...
“Bradley said the process was frustrating, but he’s ready to
concentrate on wrestling. “Technically, I guess, we have been back on
the team for a few weeks, but it seemed like the school and our athletic
director didn’t want to let us back on the team,’ he said. ‘But this is
a big step for us, our program and all colleges, too. It feels really
good to be back on the team.”
SHALALA CITES THE SAME OLD TIRED RHETORIC IN HER SPEECH AT THE NCAA
CONVENTION
U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala was given an
opportunity to address the Division I delegates to the 1988 NCAA
Convention on January 12. As former chancellor at the Univ. of Wisconsin
and a leader in the Clinton Administration, Shalala is considered a
powerful public official. However, her speech provided no new insight or
perspective on the Title IX issue, and may have included some incorrect
assumptions.
According to the NCAA News, Shalala said the following: “As a country,
we have not done enough to keep girls physically active when they’re
young, nor to open up opportunities for scholarships and participation
in intercollegiate sports when they are older.”
In fact, Shalala may not realize that right now, there are more college
sports teams for women in NCAA institutions than for men. She may not
know that at numerous schools, the women’s team in many sports have more
scholarships than men’s team in the same sport. She may not understand
that the percentage of women athletes on the college level is exactly
equal to the percentage of women athletes on the high school level.
The article goes on... “She said there is enormous national consensus
supporting Title IX and ‘that consensus will not change.’”
Actually, Donna, the opposite seems to be true. There is considerable
proof that a national backlash against quotas is emerging in the nation.
The passage of Proposition 209 in California, and its subsequent
validation in the courts, shows that quotas are unpopular. In respect to
sports, the backlash against proportionality is growing, and even the
Women’s Sports Foundation has come out with a position statement against
dropping men’s programs as a method to enforce Title IX.
The time has come to drop the old assumptions and move forward. Now is
the time to develop some new thinking, and find creative ways to expand
women’s sports without eliminating opportunity for men.
POLICY REVIEW ARTICLE BY FEMALE COLLEGE ATHLETE HITS THE TARGET
Elizabeth Arens, a varsity squash athlete at Princeton University and
the editor of the Princeton Tory, wrote an exceptional article entitled
“The Gender Refs,” in the November/December 1997 issue of the Policy
Review. We include some compelling excerpts from this story:
l “Colleges and universities are misapplying a federal
anti-discrimination statute to artificially equalize the number of men
and women participating in collegiate athletics. Thanks to pressure from
the Clinton administration and the federal courts, schools are
destroying men’s athletic programs across the country. They are capping
the size of teams, terminating long-standing programs and driving
thousands of male students off the playing fields. And they are doing it
without regard to the level of interest in sports demonstrated by female
students or to the resources of the schools they attend.”
l “In the hands of the federal judges and the officials at the U.S.
Department of Education, however, the statute has become toxic for
collegiate athletics. The Department’s Office of Civil Rights has
decided to judge compliance with the law, not by whether colleges are
practicing clear-cut discrimination but rather by if they are failing to
achieve ‘proportionality.’ In this case, proportionality means attaining
a gender ratio among varsity athletes equal to that of the student body.
If that sounds like a quota, it is.”
l “‘Title IX is being applied as an affirmative action statute requiring
a certain quota of female athletes,’ says Anita Blair, general counsel
at the Independent Women’s Forum. ‘Congress never, ever intended it to
be interpreted in this manner.’”
l “‘With the strict by-the-numbers approach to proportionality,’ says
Bob Boettner, the executive director of the College Swimming Coaches
Association, ‘it’s become a simple equation - you either add women’s
sports or you eliminate men’s sports. When administrators are faced with
making ends meet, they’ll do the latter.’”
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