This gets me riled up beyond belief. Title IX has directly affected my life in ways I can't begin to describe, as well as the lives of so many of my friends who have participated in organized sports. I remember so well the fights we had back then, just to get new uniforms, to get to use the gym at some time other than 5 am or 8 pm. I remember the reasoning used AGAINST these "privileges," saying stuff like "nobody pays attention to girl's sports" and "girls aren't interested in anything that strenuous."
And last week, I was visiting with my aunt and uncle, who were avidly following the NCAA women's tournament and the University of Minnesota women's team. They told me the women pack the auditorium, outselling the men. This happens all over, but evidently some would like to undo the laws that created the environment where this can happen. It just boggles my mind.
Link: Newsday.com column: Title IX protection under attack again.
Title IX protection under attack again
By Johnette Howard
SPORTS COLUMNIS
March 25, 2005
There are dozens of ways to illustrate why the new guidelines issued by the Bush administration a few days ago to determine schools' compliance with Title IX are an outrage and a deceit that should be attacked until they're stricken from use. But the simplest way to make the argument is to ask a simple question:What's not to like about the 1972 federal law that outlaws discrimination on the basis of gender, opened the playing fields of this country to girls, not just boys, and survived every single court challenge it has faced the past three decades?
Bush administration officials have been under heavy criticism since the U.S. Department of Education quietly released a surprise legal clarification on its Web site Friday advising colleges that, for the first time, they can remain in compliance with Title IX based on an e-mail survey of their undergraduate students designed to gauge "interest and ability" in sports. If the responses do not show enough interest - and what exactly constitutes enough has yet to be determined - then an institution can go ahead and presume it is in compliance.
Imagine that. There'll be no more pesky need to compare an athletic department's spending outlays or scholarships offered for men versus women. The burden will be on the students to enforce the law, not the universities.
Schools also have been told they can count an unreturned survey as a lack of interest. Which means one of the most effective federal laws on the books, a measure that resulted in an eight-fold boom in girls' participation in sports, can be undercut if one too many 19-year-old co-eds merely forgets in a blur of classes and keg parties and homework assignments to open, download, answer and return an e-mail survey that, right now, numbers eight Web pages.
Is this any way to set public policy?
[...]
Three members of Bush's Title IX committee were reached by phone yesterday. Ted Leland, the co-chair of the committee, said he had no idea the new guidelines were coming, and he had serious "concerns" about the closed process used to reach the decision, and the rationale that a standardized on-line, e-mail survey "can measure a complicated issue" like interest and ability."
Committee members Cary Groth, the athletic director at the University of Nevada-Reno, and Donna de Varona, the former Olympic gold medalist in swimming who was involved in the initial fight to get Title IX passed in the early 1970s, voiced the same concerns.
As de Varona said yesterday, "It shows no respect for the law or the process. It's disappointing because no matter what wonderful role models we produce, or what honor we bring to this country as women athletes, we still always have to reprove why we have a right to the opportunity to be the best we can be. Why is it that for 32 years women have to justify themselves over and over again as athletes?"
[...]
Read the entire column here.
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