Title IX

Questions and Answers About Title IX (Proportionality)

I have had a number of questions about Title IX. Here are some of the most common. If you have any questions, send me email and I will answer them.

Q: Isn't it true that males are just more interested in athletics, and isn't that our strongest Title IX argument?

A: I have discussed this issue 1000 times, it seems, because "interest" is such an important issue under the present Department of Education rule interpreting Title IX. The definition of interest is crucial, and guess who gets to create definitions?

Putting aside for a moment the rules and definitions of the OCR, I would like to discuss the interest question just from a layperson's perspective. In that context, frankly, I don't see how males can win this argument. (But I'm always interested in getting educated on this.)

The way the argument usually works is that males propose that males are more interested in athletics. They then recite the fact that males watch more athletics on television, and they play more pick-up basketball games. Finally, males can trot out a myriad of statistics reflecting that more male children go out for sports, more males go out for intramural sports in college, more males go out for division III athletics (etc. etc.) These are all good arguments.

The females respond: Female interest has skyrocketed since females have been given the opportunity to participate. Females interest is still guaged based on male type sports. For example, if figure skating and aeorbics were "sports" recognized by males, there would be more female interest than male.( etc etc.) (As a relevant aside, I have heard that more women around the world watch skating during the winter olympics than males watch the super bowl. I'd be interested if anyone has any stats on this.)

Anyway, it's hard to win this argument (either males or females) if for no other reason than the other side can simply say, give females a chance and they will have more interest.

As a legal matter, I think that the Supreme Court (if it rules on the Brown case and rules on the interest issue) will rule that interest and abilities should be determined by a different pool than the college student. Everybody knows that athletes are recruited from the high school "pool'" not the college pool. The fact that colleges try to make the numbers of females and males enrolled in a university have something to do with the numbers who are participating is irrational. Who cares how many college students are interested in sports or even a certain sport? None of them can make the team, can they? Isn't that what intramurals are for?

The Brown brief reflected a lot of discussion on the issue of whether males, in effect, were being subjected to reverse discrimination because if a school has a much larger number of males who are interested in participating, the rules still require that the school accommodate the interests only of the underrepresented sex (always females). (remember again who wrote the rules.)

I'd be interested in your position on this.

Question: What is the biggest problem for wrestling?

Answer: The biggest problem, by far, is what I call the "ebola" factor. Ebola, of course, is the virus that kills 8 out of 10 people who catch it, and it is very catchy. Every time there is an ebola break out, huge numbers of health officials converge on the area to ensure that the virus is contained.

I think of proportionality as the ebola virus that's going to kill wrestling. That virus was confined to the federal government. It was almost entirely a function of the Department of Education. Now the virus has spread to a number of states that have enacted proportionality as a statute which must be followed by all educational institutions in that particular state. Probably the worst thing that has happened is that almost every school in the country has adopted proportionality as the goal for their student population.

This means, of course, that even if we are able to get proportionality abolished at the federal level the state laws and university rules will still kill us off.

Here are the states that have already passed "Title 9" type laws - Alaska, California (this has already killed college wrestling in CA), Florida, Hawaii, IOWA, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin.

States that have passed ERA's (that may do the same thing) are: Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, ILLINOIS, Maryland Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, PENNSYVANIA, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming.

I know there are more states with Title 9 statures and ERA's that aren't on this list.

The only chance for the wrestlers in these states is to get a hearing from the Supreme Court and win on the issue that proportionality is unconstituional. That means that everybody reading this must talk to their congressman and must get them to oppose proportionality and contact Congressman Hastert.

Also, With PC being the model at the university, local and state levels, nobody is fighting the militant feminists when they introduce thes bills at the state and local levels. I have asked the wrestling community for the passed two years to let me know what's going on, but I have never heard a word.

Fortunately, the women have website - "Empowering Women" so I can always find out what's going on from them. Unfortunately by that time, it's always too late.

Question: What will adding female wrestling do to help wrestling survive?

Answer: Think about it this way (again). There are 190,000 male athletes. There are 110,000 female athletes. Now let's say that we add 50 female wrestling programs with 20 females on every team. That's 1000 additional females. Now let's add that 1000 new female athletes to the 110,000 females who are presently competing. Now where do we find the other 79,000 females to achieve proportionality? Adding female wrestling to solve our proportionality problem is an act of insanity.

If you want to start a female wrestling program because there's interest and it's right - then do it. But don't do it to solve any proportionality problems. It won't.

Question: What is the Brown brief and what are the amicus briefs about?

Answer: Brown was sued by female athletes who wanted their teams reinstated. The trial court ruled that the teams must be reinstated or male teams dropped. The Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, ruled upheld the trial court's decision. The dissenting opinion, the chief judge, stated the proportionality rule was an unconstitutional quota.

Brown appealed the case based on the reasoning of the dissenting judge.

Once in a while Congressmen decide to file a friend-of-the-court (amicus) brief to let the Supreme Court know that the issue is important to Congress also. The main purpose of the brief is to explain that the many decisions of the Courts of Appeal seem to be inconsistent with various US Supreme Court cases. In that perspective, Congress does not know when it creates legislation, whether the legislation will be constitutional.

The wrestling amicus brief will ask the Supreme Court to take the case because of the unconstituional effect propotionality has had on male athletes.

Remember the first phase is simply to get the Supreme Court to take the case.

The Court takes only about 3% of the cases, but that percentage increases markedly in a situation that has a higer profile and if we can all get our Congressman to sign the amicus.

Question: How do we know that it is Title IX that is killing male sports and not budgets?

Answer: The best clue is that male gymnastics at the college level is almost extinct and female gymnastics is thriving. Another clue is that almost every time a coach asks the administrator if the team can be reinstated if the team can become self-supporting, the administrator has said no.

Question: What would be the effect of giving the females 25 of football's scholarships.

Answer: It might help the numbers on a particular campus. In the grand scheme of things, though, this argument is a trick. Under the proportionality rule, the numbers of participants is the factor that drives scholarships and all other benefits, so the transferring of the scholarships will only move 25 -50 participants at the applicable schools (primarily Division I) and will have very little effect on our proportionality problem. I have nothing against doing it; just don't do it to solve the proportionality problem. I have one more reservation about doing this on the 60-70 Division I camp uses where football not only pays for itself but also pays for the other sports programs. It just doesn't seem fair there.

Question: Why is the definition of "participant" so important in the determination of our extinction?

Answer: During the gender equity hearings the females on "gender equity task force" stated that they felt that walk-ons and non-scholarship athletes should not be counted or should be counted differently than the scholarship athletes for purposes of Title IX. They suggested that participants should maybe be defined as scholarship athletes only. The only male on the task force (an athletic director and former football coach) stated that every walk-on he had coached felt like he was a "participant."

When I heard him say that I knew male sports were dead. The women on the task force all had IQs of 150 and the man representing the athletes had played too many games without his helmet.

Since then, things have only gotten worse. Norma Cantu, the Assistant Secretary of Education, recently clarified her rules and policies interpreting Title IX. Her new rules ensure that male walk-ons will be dropped because there is no way that females can be required to fill their rosters with walk-ons before asking for new teams. In other words, if the male track team has 60 members, 40 of whom are walk-ons; and the female team has 20 members, the athletic director can not ask the females to fill up their roster with 40 more females. The athletic director is required to start another team for females or get rid of the male walk-ons or some male team (like wrestling).

Presently there are about 7000 college male athletic teams and 7000 college female teams. There are 190,000 male athletes and 110,000 female athletes. The main difference in total individual participation is the number of walk-ons. Soon most of the non-scholarship athletes will be gone. So instead of requiring females to walk-on for awhile to even up the numbers, administrators are just going to dump males.

Thanks for your help.

Dale Anderson

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