Title IX has undergone quite a bit of scrutiny lately.
The section of the Education Amendments of 1972, which outlaws sex discrimination at schools receiving federal funds, could undergo some drastic changes.
And change it should.
I applaud the Bush Commission for recognizing the need for review of the law, which has made great strides for women in athletics over the past 31 years.
The purpose of the Commission was to review the current standings of Title IX and decide whether it needed to be revised.
A minority opinion was recently released by Donna de Varona and Julie Foudy of the Commission, which outlines the findings and recommendations of the committee.
I do not agree with some of the findings, including that the three-part test of Title IX does not issue a quota system because it does, and that Title IX does not cause cuts to men’s teams because it does.
Title IX needs to be revised and there are certain issues of the law which have been under scrutiny that need clarification.
First, Title IX contains what is known as the three-part test. It came about in 1979 and serves the purpose to show whether universities are in compliance with the law.
The most important of the three, and the one that endures the most examination, is the first prong. It states that a school’s male-to-female ratio of athletes be in line with its ratio of male-to-female students.
So, for example, if Oregon’s student body is 48 percent female, then its participants in athletics should also be 48 percent female.
The first problem is that less than 20 percent of universities across the nation comply. And those that make an attempt end up cutting non-revenue men’s sports, such as wrestling or swimming, in order to add women’s teams.
Oregon, for example, dropped men’s baseball and gymnastics in 1981 because of a budget crunch. And recently, Oregon added a women’s lacrosse team. All in effort to move toward compliance of Title IX.
Luckily, Oregon was nice enough to cut baseball rather than wrestling. The National Wrestling Association has received the bad end of Title IX from the start, considering 171 teams have been cut in the past two decades.
The reason for wrestling cuts along with other small men’s sports?
Well, everybody loves to point the finger at football. And why not?
In Texas, all 10 of the schools that play Division I-A football spent more money on football alone than on all women’s programs combined in the 2001 school year.
Is the large amount of money allotted to football programs the reason that small men’s sports get cut and universities don’t comply?
Yes.
Do I blame football?
No.
You can’t blame football because the budgeting of schools is all at the discretion of each university. Also, football is the only other sport besides basketball which even makes a profit, allowing other sports to exist.
I have another bone to pick, and it is with the Office of Civil Rights. The OCR is in charge of enforcing the standards of Title IX. And, according to the minority opinion, “OCR has never imposed a financial penalty on a school for failing to comply with the three-part test.”
So we have this great law, which does great things, which nobody abides by and nobody enforces. Why? Because America has too many other things to worry about and quite frankly nobody wants to talk about Title IX. Everybody is afraid of saying the wrong thing.
Title IX has done great things over the past 30 years. There is no denying that. But everybody just wants to sit around and hope that it will do even better over the next three decades all by itself.
Title IX needs to be revised in a way that still benefits women in their opportunities, but does not cause cuts to men’s programs. It needs to be revised in a way that can allow universities to comply so it can be enforced.
Let’s hope the next 30 years go over better than the first.