Sports(wo)manship

By ANNIE ATURA

April 29, 2010

It’s hardly sur­pris­ing that George W. Bush’s tac­tics to de-fang Title IX failed to attract the media cov­er­age they deserved. Bush was at the helm of a smor­gas­bord of treach­er­ous projects, and those grue­some endeav­ors were the proper focus of pub­lic out­rage. True, war crimes war­rant more atten­tion than women’s sports, but the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion man­aged to weaken equity in our school sys­tem while we were all star­ing, open-mouthed, at the most egre­gious offenses. Luck­ily, Obama took note of the smaller sins of his pre­de­ces­sor and is now tak­ing steps to undo Bush’s dam­age. This week, one such rever­sal was announced.

Title IX, which out­laws gen­der dis­crim­i­na­tion within fed­er­ally financed edu­ca­tion pro­grams, is most pop­u­larly known for its equal­iz­ing effect on women’s ath­let­ics in pub­lic schools. Under Title IX, women are guar­an­teed access to the same sports pro­grams as men. The pro­vi­sion, passed on June 23, 1972 as an amend­ment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was intended pri­mar­ily as a means of pro­tect­ing women against hir­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion; only in its imple­men­ta­tion did the bill’s focus shift to extracur­ric­u­lar programs.

Cohen v. Brown, filed in 1992 and decided in 1995, deter­mined the test of adher­ence to Title IX in the sports arena. The case was brought against Brown by a group of female ath­letes after the school cut the vol­ley­ball and gym­nas­tics teams for fis­cal rea­sons. In their deci­sion, the court effec­tively estab­lished three sys­tems of cri­te­ria to deter­mine appro­pri­ate rep­re­sen­ta­tion of female ath­letes: schools must either show 1) that their ath­letic enroll­ment by gen­der is pro­por­tional to their gen­eral enroll­ment by gen­der; 2) that they are in a process of con­tin­ual expan­sion of sports pro­grams for the under­rep­re­sented sex; or 3) that the school fully and effec­tively accom­mo­dates the inter­est and abil­ity of the under­rep­re­sented sex. The first test proved the most com­mon and effec­tive method of demon­strat­ing true equal­ity of opportunity.

Bush sig­nif­i­cantly cur­tailed the power of Title IX by reform­ing the method of its insti­tu­tion. Prior to 2005, schools gen­er­ally tested their com­pli­ance with Title IX by employ­ing the pro­por­tion­al­ity test. But in 2005, the Office of Civil Rights declared a ‘clar­i­fi­ca­tion’ of the three-prong test, claim­ing that schools could demon­strate stu­dent inter­est by con­duct­ing online surveys.

This sys­tem proved detri­men­tal to the gen­der equal­ity of ath­letic edu­ca­tion for two rea­sons. First, it allowed schools to inter­pret a lack of stu­dent response as a lack of inter­est. Sec­ond, it neglected the obvi­ous con­fu­sion of cause and effect – stu­dents inter­ested in a par­tic­u­lar sport would elect to go to a school that offered that sport, whether or not the school was desir­able for other rea­sons. Thus, stu­dents that would oth­er­wise be inter­ested in a thriv­ing team might be unaware of their own abil­i­ties in the sport, not hav­ing been exposed to it, and those already aware of their abil­ity might have cho­sen not to attend at all.

The Obama reform, announced April 20, still allows schools to employ the third prong of the judi­cial test, but requires that schools wish­ing to do so sup­ple­ment their inter­net sur­veys with other tests, includ­ing analy­sis of the ath­letic com­po­si­tions of feeder high schools and track­ing of club teams’ peti­tions to become var­sity sports.

Luck­ily, the Obama reform isn’t really chang­ing busi­ness as usual — just ide­ol­ogy as rep­re­sented by the books. The Bush sys­tem was so exe­crable that even the NCAA opposed it, and it wasn’t ever com­monly imple­mented for pre­cisely that rea­son: the NCAA advised schools under its juris­dic­tion to employ the pro­por­tion­al­ity test instead. Advo­cates of under-enrolled men’s sports (like wrestling), which are the first to go when schools equi­tably dis­trib­ute lim­ited funds, were the only vocal defend­ers of Bush’s system.

More fund­ing for schools is always prefer­able to less fund­ing, but it’s hardly fair to favor men in dis­trib­ut­ing those funds cur­rently avail­able to ath­letic depart­ments. To quote Joe Biden, “Mak­ing Title IX as strong as pos­si­ble is a no-brainer. What we’re doing here today will bet­ter ensure equal oppor­tu­nity in ath­let­ics, and allow­ing women to real­ize their poten­tial — so this nation can real­ize its potential.”