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Title IX

Tinkering to Title IX aimed at preserving men's teams

Commission approves only minor proposals that alter how athletes count toward compliance.

Compiled from Times wires
© St. Petersburg Times
published January 31, 2003

WASHINGTON -- Reacting to cuts in men's sports, a Bush administration advisory commission Thursday recommended changes in a landmark gender equity law that has ignited a women's sports explosion in colleges and high schools. The proposed changes alarmed women's advocates who want the status quo.

The Commission on Opportunity in Athletics considered about 24 recommendations for Title IX during two days of sometimes contentious meetings. The most sweeping recommendations failed to pass -- one proposal produced a 7-7 vote -- but the panel endorsed allowing the Education Department to tinker with the ways students and athletes are counted to measure compliance with the law.

"It's very obvious that everyone recognizes that there needs to be change, and this is a great first step," said Mike Moyer, the executive director of the National Wrestling Coaches Association.

"It will certainly stem further loss of programs," said Moyer, whose organization has filed a lawsuit claiming Title IX has led to the elimination of hundreds of men's teams.

The advisory commission will forward its report to Education Secretary Rod Paige, who formed the panel last year in response to the lawsuit. It takes an act of Congress to fundamentally change the law, but Paige can alter the way compliance is measured.

Paige said in a statement, "I am very pleased that the commission has agreed on a number of reforms that will strengthen Title IX."

Title IX prohibits gender discrimination in public and private schools that receive federal funding, which almost all do. It covers admissions, recruitment, course offerings, counseling, financial aid, student health and student housing, as well as athletics.

The commission only looked at sports, where the law's effect has been especially profound. Girls participating in high school sports rose from 294,000 in 1971 to 2.8-million in 2002. Women in college sports increased fivefold during the same time.

But about 400 men's college teams were eliminated during the 1990s, with wrestling taking a particularly hard hit, as schools attempted to meet a "proportionality" standard requiring a ratio of male and female athletes similar to the overall student population.

The commission recommended several changes to the standard. They involve roster spots, nonscholarship athletes and nontraditional students.

"The commission has opened the door for the secretary to do a lot of damage to Title IX," said Donna Lopiano, executive director of the Women's Sports Foundation. "They changed the way of counting collegiate participation. The number of male athletes will be deflated; the number of female athletes will be inflated."

Under one change, the number of roster spots on a team, not the number of athletes, would count toward Title IX compliance.

Commission co-chairman Ted Leland, athletic director at Stanford University, said the rule would prevent a school from stacking "100 women on the rowing team" to inflate the number of female athletes to comply with the proportionality requirement.

Critics said the change could allow a school to add scores of male athletes, notably nonscholarship walkons, beyond the set limits without them counting toward Title IX compliance.

The commission also recommended that unrecruited walkons and nontraditional students, such as part-timers, not be counted toward the Title IX total. The change mostly would apply to smaller schools, particularly community colleges, although some Division I schools would be affected.

The 7-7 vote came on a revamped proposal by Maryland athletic director Debbie Yow to allow schools to comply with proportionality by having a 50 percent split of male and female athletes, regardless of student body makeup, with a leeway of 2 to 3 percentage points. Her earlier proposal called for a leeway of 5 to 7 points.

"If we had an apple and were hungry and we wanted to be fair, we would split it 50-50," Yow said. "It is an attempt to be fair."

Commissioner Julie Foudy, a member of the U.S. soccer team, voted against that proposal, saying the current standard should be better enforced.

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