The future of Title IX, a landmark piece of legislation that attempts to achieve gender equality in collegiate sports, will be evaluated this week in Washington.
More than 30 years after the initial passage of Title IX became a law, the Commission on Opportunity in Athletics is finalizing its recommendations to the Bush administration on how to reform the 1972 law.
Title IX prohibits schools receiving federal aid from sexual discrimination in their academic and athletic programs.
The proposals being considered would weaken Title IX's compliance requirement. Under one recommendation, athletic directors would be allowed to decrease current funding for female athletic scholarships although women, on average, constitute a majority on campuses nationwide.
Praised by some as increasing athletic opportunities for women and condemned by others as leading smaller men's programs to the chopping block, Title IX is a lightning rod in both high school and collegiate athletics.
The University, however, has not experienced problems typical at other schools.
"The University has been on the forefront of Title IX and providing opportunities for women's sports while not dropping men's sports which other schools have had to do," said Mark Fletcher, a University associate athletic director.
The law stipulates that schools must allot their scholarships according to the ratio of enrolled students, meet the "needs and interests" of its student body or show a history of expanding athletic opportunities for the "underrepresented sex."
According to the University's 2002 Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act Information filing, women's programs consume 34.8 percent of operating costs and women athletes only make up 43.8 percent of the student athlete population. Football and men's basketball take up 67.8 percent of the men's and 44.3 percent of the total operating costs.
University Athletic director Craig Littlepage said these expenditures "match our participation rates and student athlete population." Littlepage also noted that the University has expanded scholarships, offices, facilities and coaching positions for women's sports. The University added women's rowing in 1995 and women's golf in 2001.
"Women are also hurt because, rather than adding women's programs, athletic directors are only cutting men's programs to comply with the standard," University men's wrestling Coach Lenny Bernstein said.
He added that the law is, in effect, a quota whose basis cannot be supported.
"The idea that there is the same degree of interest is flawed," he said. "Right now, funding is tied to a quota of how many men and women are at the University. Let's base it off of interest and not some arbitrary quota."
Despite the apparent success of Title IX at the University, other Virginia schools, particularly the predominantly female James Madison University, has been more heavily affected by the legislation.
In April 2000, the father of a JMU softball player complained to the Office of Civil Rights that his daughter's club softball team, despite promises by the school, had not been elevated to a fully-funded university athletic program. The school subsequently upgraded the program at the expense of other men's and women's sports.
Jane Mann, the coach of the University's new women's golf team, who was unable to participate in either high school or college athletics, said Title IX has done a "great deal for sports in general" and is vital in preventing discrimination in sports.
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