IN 1972 a total of 29,992 women participated in college sports. By 2001, the number of women athletes was more than five times that at 150,916, according to a Chronicle of Higher Education study ("Title IX at 30," June 21). No doubt such a dramatic increase in the number of athletes has had a positive effect on the quality of women's sports and, through also-growing scholarships, on the opportunities available to women in education. This increase is a direct result of Title IX, the federal law that dictates standards for gender equality in athletics and education for all schools, universities and organizations that accept federal money. Unfortunately, the way in which that law is enforced also has forced many colleges to cut men's sports in order to maintain compliance and avoid investigation.
Colleges and universities are able to prove Title IX compliance using the aptly named three-part test. According to a June 1997 Department of Education report on Title IX, schools can show that the proportion of female athletes compared to the total number of athletes is consistent with the proportion of female students, a concept known as "substantial proportionality." Alternately, schools can show that they have "a history and continuing practice of program expansion that is responsive to the developing interests and abilities of the underrepresented sex," or that, if there are disproportionately few women athletes, the interest for women's sports is being met. Since former President Bill Clinton's rededication to enforcing Title IX, the first test has been the one sure way for colleges to avoid investigations for Title IX violation.
It is this part of the three tests, and its relative importance, that has prompted a federal commission to investigate how Title IX is enforced.
The commission will not, nor should it, seek to overturn Title IX. The law has done wonders for women's athletics and in opening doors for women at the university level. In addition, there is still room for improvement, as signified by the persisting disparity between salaries for men's and women's coaches as well as the relatively small number of schools -- of which the University is one -- that award the proportion of women's athletic scholarships deemed acceptable by Title IX.
Yet the emphasis on "substantial proportionality" creates several problems. The rule does not dictate a specific number of athletes who must be female, but its insistence that the proportion of female athletes must reflect that of the student body is reminiscent of quota rules routinely struck down in legal cases pertaining to affirmative action.
More importantly, the rule presents practical concerns. In order to comply with Title IX, aGeneral Accounting Office study estimates that 300 men's teams have been cut ("College coaches press Bush on interpretation of Title IX," The Wall Street Journal, May 19). One sport hit particularly hard is college wrestling. Wrestling coaches sued the Department of Education, spurring President Bush to appoint the current commission. In addition to cutting sports like men's tennis, wrestling or track and field, some schools have put a cap on the number of walk-ons that men's teams can carry. Walk-ons are non-scholarship players who cost very little to carry and therefore do not inflate men's sports budgets or pull money away from women's sports. The only reason their numbers are being limited is to force participation numbers within the limits imposed by Title IX.
One of the primary reasons for the cuts to smaller men's sports, a result certainly not intended by the original legislation, is college football. College football is an anomaly in the world of college sports. The NCAA allows colleges to carry 85 scholarship athletes in football, far and away the most of any sport. The sport is also obscenely expensive and not lucrative except at the very top of Division I. At the same time, the sport is, at many NCAA schools, inextricably linked to the image and traditions of a school. If college football participation rates were eliminated, or, more reasonably, weighted in some way when considering proportionality, the change would avoid many of the limitations it now imposes on men's sports.
Appointing a commission to review the ways in which Title IX is enforced was an appropriate and timely decision. The law is a good one in that it forces schools in the direction of equity. However, its unintended and undesirable side effects need to be addressed. An appropriate revision of the guidelines would allow for more emphasis on the latter two methods of demonstrating compliance, particularly the third, which requires that colleges meet the interest in women's sports. "Equity" should not penalize one group, particularly when the limiting factor is the rule, not the resources.
(Megan Moyer's column appears
Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at mmoyer@cavalierdaily.com.)
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