Copyright 2002 San Antonio Express-News San Antonio
Express-News (Texas)
June 23, 2002, Sunday , METRO
SECTION: SPORTS; One in an occasional series on the 30th
anniversary of Title IX ; Pg. 1C
LENGTH: 2266
words
HEADLINE: Title IX turns ... 30 ; Debate
still continues over fairness of federal law for athletics that was passed on
this day in 1972.
BYLINE: Tom Orsborn
BODY: There always
seems to be a Texan keeping proponents of Title IX awake at night.
In the beginning, it was John Tower, the powerful U.S.
senator once called "the father of the modern day Republican Party."
These days, it's President Bush who worries champions of
the federal law that prohibits gender discrimination at institutions that
receive federal funds.
"The Bush Administration
makes me very nervous," Women's Sports Foundation executive director Donna
Lopiano said. "What it's attempting now is a veiled weakening of the law. They
say they support Title IX. But under the table, they are saying, 'We support a
weaker Title IX.'
"That's a stance I don't
think voters, especially soccer moms, will appreciate."
A White House spokesman responded by saying that Bush is a Title IX
supporter and noted that the government moved to dismiss a recent lawsuit,
alleging that government regulations discriminated against male athletes.
Despite the White House's stance, many other
activists share Lopiano's mix of anxiety and anger, and it's that volatile mix
of emotion that keeps them from fully celebrating today's 30th anniversary of
the day the amendment to the 1964 Civil Rights Act was signed into law.
"We've made great strides (since '72), and there
is a lot to be proud of," said Dr. Diana Everett, executive director for the
Texas Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, "but
those of us who have been in the trenches working for the rights of women to
participate in sport recognize the war is not over."
Such rhetoric is commonplace among Title IX's staunchest protectors.
For years, they have been fighting attempts by lawmakers to curtail the
legislation's impact and are now ready to take on an administration they believe
is not committed to protecting Title IX.
"The
fight continues today on many different fronts," Texas women's basketball coach
Jody Conradt said. "You can pick up any newspaper and see that Title IX is being
blamed for many of the cuts of programs on the men's side. Title IX is an easy
scapegoat, and that probably won't stop."
Defending Title IX is nothing new to women such as Lopiano and Conradt.
Just two years after President Nixon signed
Title IX into law, Tower proposed an amendment to exempt moneymaking sports from
the provision. It was eventually rejected, thanks mainly to the lobbying efforts
of such women as Dr. Ann Uhlir, dean emeritus of the College of Health Sciences
at Texas Woman's University in Denton.
"There
was tremendous resistance in the 1970s," said Uhlir, director of the Association
of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women from 1979-82. "There were a number of
times we had to rally the troops to attempt to refute the claims (Tower) was
making.
"Between 1972 and 1979, people like
Tower were always saying, 'Title IX will seriously damage men's sports.' But the
truth is more new money and more new sports programs went to men than they did
to women, although women were way behind in terms of opportunity."
Title IX was challenged again and again throughout the
1970s and '80s, a period in which many schools made feeble efforts to comply
with the law. But women's groups answered the call each time a challenge was
issued.
"Some people think the changes Title IX
produced happened overnight," Conradt said. "That's not the truth. It was a
long, hard-fought fight."
Finally, in 1992, a
ruling from the judicial branch empowered victims of gender discrimination to
aggressively pursue legal action. In handing down its unanimous decision in
Franklin vs. Gwinnett County Public Schools, the U.S. Supreme Court made it
clear plaintiffs in Title IX lawsuits could include claims for compensatory and
punitive damages.
"Progress really started with
Franklin vs. Gwinnett County," said Ellen Staurowsky, a professor of sports
sociology at Ithaca (N.Y.) College. "That was a wake-up call for administrators.
After 1992, it was abundantly clear administrators could no longer ignore the
legislation or be lackadaisical in complying with it."
Thanks to Title IX, statistics for participation in sports by females
are now robust.
According to the National
Collegiate Athletic Association, there has been a fivefold increase in women's
participation in college sports since 1972, from 29,977 to 150,916. The National
Federation of High Schools reports a jump from 294,015 to 2,784,154 during the
same period.
When Title IX became law in '72, 1
in 27 girls in high school played a sport. In 2000, the ratio was 1 in 3.
"Progress," Conradt said, "has been really
significant, and that's by every measuring stick - number of participants, funds
provided to women's sports, number of spectators, newspaper coverage. You can go
right down the line and see that there has been tremendous progress."
Said UTSA athletic director Lynn Hickey: "It's now
culturally acceptable to be a female athlete. The debate on whether it is OK for
girls to run and get sweaty is over."
***
That may be true, but another debate rages. This one centers on the
decision by some schools to cut men's teams to find money to pay for new women's
programs. More than 350 men's teams have been abolished since '72, according to
the U.S. General Accounting Office.
University
officials justify the cuts by saying it is the only way they can comply with
Title IX guidelines. Women's rights activists counter with the claim that those
same university officials aren't seeking creative funding solutions.
"That's just a farce," said Everett, referring to the
suggestion that non-revenue generating men's programs must be cut to make way
for women's teams. "Those programs are being cut at the discretion of the
athletic directors. If money were more equally spent, there wouldn't be that
problem."
Instead of axing programs like men's
wrestling and gymnastics, athletic directors should strongly consider trimming
some of the fat from their massive football and basketball programs, Title IX
supporters contend.
"It is not the intent of
Title IX to do away with men's teams," said Everett, a former executive director
of the National Association for Girls and Women in Sport. "What happens is the
humongous programs of men's football and basketball gobble up the money at the
discretion of the ADs."
Such thinking angers
football coaches. They believe their budgets shouldn't be cut because football
teams generate most of the money that supports their school's other teams.
Supporting that claim is a recent study by the
College Football Association. According to the study that polled 87 of Division
I-A's 111 schools, Division I-A football teams generated $628 million during the
1995-96 school year. Their expenses were $328 million.
"Football has always been the focus of the attacks (by women's
groups)," said Grant Teaff, executive director of the American Football Coaches
Association. "That whole argument about cutting football programs is ludicrous,
and they've hung their hat on that. I honestly think that some of that group
want football to be de-emphasized or just flat out disappear from the face of
the earth, and I can tell you that's not going to happen."
Lopiano says it's a myth that football foots the bill for
the rest of the athletics programs. Although major Division I-A powers may be
money makers, an NCAA study released in April showed that during the 1995-96
school year, the average small-school programs designated as Division I-AA lost
nearly $600,000 on football.
"Let's get to the
heart of the argument," Lopiano said, "which is, 'Should there be an economic
excuse for schools not to follow civil rights law?' Would it be right if you had
a daughter or a son in a wheelchair, and a school, in violation of the civil
disabilities act, said they couldn't build a ramp to accommodate them because
they couldn't afford it?
"What's happening is
there is an absence of leadership (among the college presidents and athletic
directors). There is an elephant standing in the middle of the room and no one
wants to talk about it. Everyone knows there is an arm's race going on and it's
sucking money out of the system and funneling it to one or two sports. It would
seem to me it would be of everyone's interest not to play that game."
Lopiano said schools with large football programs should
follow the example set by the University of Texas, which gathered money from
boosters to bolster its women's program after settling a class-action suit in
1993 brought against it by seven female students.
The lawsuit challenged the school's failure to provide equal
opportunities for women to participate in sports. When it was filed in 1992,
female students were 47 percent of the undergraduate enrollment but had access
to only 23 percent of the school's athletic opportunities. The settlement
required Texas to bring female athletic participation within 3 percent of female
enrollment and female athletic scholarships within 2 percent of participation.
"The suit was hard to face because our
commitment (to women's sports) had been strong," Conradt said. "But after
looking at it, we agreed more had to be done and we set out to do more."
What UT did was ask its boosters and alumni to
donate money to women's sports.
"UT did it the
right way," said Lopiano, UT's director of intercollegiate athletics for women
from 1975-92. "They went to their boosters and said, 'This is the right thing to
do, and the boosters stepped up to the plate.'"
One of those boosters was San Antonio billionaire B.J. "Red" McCombs.
His $3 million gift in 1997 is believed to be the largest single donation ever
made to a women's college athletic program, and it helped pay for a new softball
field and softball scholarships.
McCombs,
however, said his donation had nothing to do with gender equity.
"I wasn't driven by Title IX or gender equity," he said.
"To me, it was just an issue of fairness ... I got angry at myself for being
part of the system and not even noticing that female athletes had been slighted
in a big way."
McCombs, however, doesn't believe
the government should be involved in promoting gender equity in schools.
"I would personally never support Title IX as a
law," McCombs said. "I support increased awareness of the lack of facilities and
opportunities in girls athletics."
He also
doesn't agree with schools that cut men's programs to fund women's sports.
"I don't think we will ever gain anything by
taking from one program to give to another," the Minnesota Vikings owner said.
"We have to continue to be aware of the marketplace, as it were, and the
marketplace can grow funds in football and (men's) basketball programs that can
help carry the other programs."
***
Another major dispute between women's groups and football coaches
centers on the issue of "proportionality."
Since
1979, the U.S. Education Department's Office of Civil Rights - the agency that
oversees Title IX compliance - has stipulated that the most basic way a school
can move toward compliance is to have its number of male and female athletes "in
proportion" to its undergraduate student body.
During the 2000 campaign, Bush indicated support for Title IX. However,
he also said he opposed "strict proportionality that pits one group against
another."
The "proportionality" issue was at the
forefront of a recent lawsuit filed in federal court by the National Wrestling
Coaches Association and others, against the U.S. Department of Education, to
overturn what they called a quota system for athletic participation.
On May 29, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a motion
to dismiss the case on narrow procedural grounds. Although supporters of Title
IX were pleased with the Department of Justice's stance, they were also
disappointed that the motion to dismiss did not defend "the legality and
validity" of Title IX.
"What is revealing is
what the government didn't say," Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the
National Women's Law Center, told The NCAA News. "It made absolutely no defense
of the underlying policies that were challenged by the wrestlers, and it sets
off alarms as to what the future plans of the administration might be, whether
they are keeping their options open to roll back and weaken Title
IX enforcement."
Although it remains to be
seen whether the Bush Administration will work to alter Title
IX, Conradt believes a new generation of activists must be ready to fight
any such challenges.
"Today's young people,"
Conradt said, "need to realize that it hasn't always been their God-given right
to participate. There has been a struggle, and great sacrifices were made, and
we all need to know from a historical perspective what our responsibilities are
today."
torsborn@express-news.net
Staff writer Gary Martin contributed to this report.
FROM GRAPHIC:
Sounding off on Title IX
"You can pick up any newspaper and see that Title IX is being blamed
for many of the cuts of programs on the men's side. Title IX is an easy
scapegoat, and that probably won't stop."
Jody
Conradt
UT women's basketball coach
"To me, it was just an
issue of fairness. ... I got angry at myself for being part of the system and
not even noticing that female athletes had been slighted in a big way."
B.J. "Red" McCombs
UT athletics benefactor
GRAPHIC:
GRAPHIC: QUOTE BOX ; GRAPHIC: TIMELINE ; GRAPHIC: GRAPH : Sounding off on Title
IX ; Title IX in Texas Timeline ; Athletic participation comparison
Document 27 of 67. 