The Super 32
Make NC Mat your start-up page
|
TASK FORCE MEDIA NOTES
TASK FORCE MEDIA NOTES
VOL. 2, NO. 4 (March 4, 1998)
This is part of a series of regular reports
to update, inform, educate and stimulate public discussion
MANHATTAN INSTITUTE FELLOW WRITES “TITLE IX FROM OUTER SPACE”
Walter Olson, an author and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute,
wrote a compelling article entitled “Title IX from Outer Space: How
federal law is killing men’s college sports.” This article can be found
on the web page for Reason Magazine.
Consider these excerpts:
l “The month was October 1993, and the California State University
System had just agreed to settle a National Organization for Women
lawsuit by adopting a quota system for varsity sports participation,
promising that women’s share would come out within 5 percentage points
of female enrollment at each of its 19 campuses... This settlement’s
compliance deadline was set for fall 1998, and by mid-1997 one of its
results had become clear: massive cuts in men’s sports throughout the
Cal State system.”
l “The next targets for Title IX enforcers are elementary and secondary
schools. Already, many high schoolers in Florida face a ban on all
athletic competition because their schools haven’t done well enough at
equalizing sports participation. Armed with a 1992 Supreme Court
decision which allows complaintants to demand cash damages as well as
lawyers fees, litigators and regulators are swarming around the field
house.”
l “The premise of the gender-equity movement is simple: Women’s sports
should get as much money, attention and participation as men’s. It’s a
lovely ambition, acceptable in the end to most college administrators as
well as most social reformers. Only two obstacles remain: the fans and
the participants.”
l “In questionnaires of prospective Brown students, 50 percent of the
men but only 30 percent of the women expressed interest in trying out
for athletics. Intramural sports were open to all at Brown, but eight
times as many men took part as women... Women at Vassar participate in
varsity sports at a rate 13 percent lower then men, even though Vassar
was a women’s college until 1969.”
l “In practice, according to the American Football Association and other
critics, proportionality is the ‘primary emphasis of enforcement,’ and
the other two tests, though they may furnish the regulators some facade
of deniability against quota charges, offer no enduring safe harbor of
compliance.”
l “In any event, the head-count, not money, is what’s often really at
legal issue... Roster cutbacks for ‘big’ men’s sports, a common
proposal, aid compliance efforts not so much because they save pots of
money - the non-star ‘walk-ons” dropped are typically already playing
without scholarships, travel or equipment subsidies - but because they
keep down the number of male bodies.”
l “It appears next to impossible to find anyone willing to criticize
the law in principle. Sure, enforcement has gone haywire and the results
are crazy, but everyone hastens to add that of course they just adore
the law itself. As for the old idea that universities in a free society
should be entitled to make their own decisions, well, that notion, like
so many men’s track teams, is on its last lap.”
THE CRAZINESS CONTINUES: TITLE IX THREATENS BASEBALL FIELD LIGHTS
More and more, the Title IX statute is being used as a weapon by
special interest groups to challenge just about anything.
Consider this recent news item from the Washington Post, a January 31
article by Ann O’Hanlon entitled, “Playing Fair? Field Lights Become a
Gender Issue.”
The Prince William County School Board, in planning for a new high
school, decided to include lights for the baseball field. It was just a
small item in the $30 million cost of the school, but school officials
thought they were ahead of the game to install lights during the initial
construction, rather than after the fact.
According to the article, “Then one School Board member threw them a
curve. ‘Baseball lights?’ said Linda Lutes (Occoquan) at a recent
meeting. “What about softball lights?’”
Anybody with a knowledge of sports understands that baseball and
softball are different games, the fields are of different sizes, and
they are used by different people. It is clearly another example of
comparing apples and oranges. This kind of reach is typical of the way
that Title IX enforcement is rammed down the throats of athletic
administrators all over the nation.
The school district came up with a solution that it believed would
avoid the hassles of a Title IX legal fight, and allow them to keep the
lights. They asked the county to pay the $200,000 cost of installing the
lights, since the field is used more often by community groups than the
school district. However, this solution did not please those with an
vested interest in causing a controversy.
Consider this comment from the article: “But Mary Bower, legal director
of the Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union said that
doesn’t solve the problem. ‘I don’t think there’s any difference at
all,” Bauer said. Regardless of whether the money comes from the county
or the school system, if boys’ and girls’ athletic facilities are not
equitable, ‘it’s a Title IX violation.’”
This challenge could have caused the school to cancel its plans for the
lights, which injures those who use the baseball field without providing
anything for those who use the softball field. That’s the problem with
proportionality - it punishes some without creating much benefit to
others.
So why do these kind of problems keep cropping up so often? Reporter
Ann O’Hanlon asked the school board member who created the controversy.
“Lutes said she asked the question about the new Woodbridge area high
school ‘to raise people’s consiousness’ about inequity in sports.’”
Enough said.
EQUIVILENCY SPORTS OFFER MORE SPORTS OPPORTUNITIES TO COLLEGE STUDENTS
It was reported in the NCAA News that the NCAA Committee on Women’s
Athletes has asked the Division I Committee on Financial Aid to review
scholarship policies. They were responding to concerns from the Office
of Civil Rights (OCR) that institutions inadvertently may violate Title
IX while offering a full complement of scholarships for women’s sports.
The Committee on Women’s Athletics wants the financial aid committee to
consider making changes.
At issue is the NCAA’s distinction between head count and equivilency
sports. In simple terms, for a head count sport, all athletes on
scholarship must receive a full scholarship. In Div. I, football, men’s
and women’s basketball, women’s gymnastics, women’s volleyball and
women’s tennis are head count sports. An equivilency sport allows
universities to divide scholarships up into partial grant-in-aids.
Before the NCAA begins monkeying around with the current rules, they
need to understand the importance of equivilency sports on the college
level. Clearly, the ability to divide up scholarships allows coaches for
both men’s and women’s team a mechanism to recruit for more athletes to
participate in college. This creates opportunities, especially with the
financial challenges that face most universities. This rule has been
successful in providing more students a chance to play.
The NCAA rules almost require equivilency for some sports. Wrestling,
which has 10 weight divisions, has a maximum of 9.9 scholarships per
program. Other sports have a greater gap between number of competitors
on a team and the scholarship limit. Because of injuries and other
factors, there is no way to field a competitive team in many sports
without splitting up scholarships.
The push for proportionality has gone from a focus on participation to
a focus on money. Creating more head-count sports will only put greater
pressure on the university athletic budget, without creating more
opportunity. The NCAA should continue to allow equivilency sports for
both men and women, which encourages more participation and a wider
opportunity to all.
|