The New York Times Finds Duke Men Are Women, for Title IX Purposes

[GKirk]

http://www.carolinamarch.com/2011/4/28/2138336/the-new-york-times-finds-duke-men-are-women-for-title-ix-purposes

The New York Times printed the results of an investigation Tuesday on the myriad of schools gaming the Title IX requirements in various ways. The centerpiece of the article is the South Florida women's country team, which had a roster of 71 (!) women in 2009. Only 28 competed in a race, and one runner interviewed was kept on the roster after quitting and returning her scholarship and given free shoes and advantages in class registration in return. Apparently lots of schools pad their track rosters, because the athletes can be counted as participants in three sports. greatly upping their female athlete totals. (USF for the record denies this, but didn't make their track coach available for interviews.)

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I burst out laughing when I read that headline!

[The Doctor.]

1. Title IX is a travesty.

Good intentions, but unfortunate results.

[lumberjack_jeff]

2. +1 n/t

[GKirk]

3. Partly because...

...one of the ways they balance the participation is by cutting mens's teams instead of
building up women's teams.

[Igel]

4. Title IX was a good idea.

And it was workable. It mandated process.

The implementation required that either the number of slots for male and female athletics be the same or that the funding be the same.

Then it was decided that the outcome wasn't what they expected. There was still more money spent on men's sports--more revenues, too, but they could overlook that. And, worst of all, there were more men athletes than women athletes. Of course, that could only mean the process was somehow wrong, and the only interpretation available to the enforcers' feeble brains was "discrimination."

So they altered how they evaluated the process. Still not the right result. And altered it again. Still not the right result.

In the meantime, men's teams were disbanded and women's teams started. When I was in grad school there was a implementation shift in Title IX. In response, my school actively recruited women to be on intramural and intermural squads. They ran large ads. They posted flyers in all the departments. They came around to the dorms and put in appearances in female-heavy activity- and advocacy-based clubs. They offered stipends. They gave the women's teams the pick of times and fields, offered the newest facilities and even offered to make the schedule work, whatever the women's teams wanted. They had coaches. They wold provide uniforms, training coaches, and refreshments (even). They guaranteed field time. They even had repeated tryout opportunities. They just didn't have warm bodies--essentially show up and you're on the team. (The men's teams? They got the leftovers. There was a small announcement in the student paper a couple of days before the tryouts, to be held one day at 7 a.m.; the men would have to provide their own uniforms and contribute some money for a part-time coach. Fewer than half the men made the cut, and every team was filled.)

They *still* had to cut men's teams again that year because the men were far more interested in being on teams than the women were--and this is just a "warm body count" comparing things like soccer or tennis., leaving out the "big name" sports. Strictly speaking, the asymmetry in recruitment efforts screams "sexism." The Title IX folk said that the preferential treatment didn't go nearly far enough to be considered "neutral."

[GKirk]

5. You can't make women

want to play college sports much like you can't make men be interested in the WNBA

[The Doctor.]

6. You just made the case for why it wasn't workable.

It was a ham-handed attempt to 'create' equality in sports. As you said, you can't force women to join sports at the same rate as men. In this case, colleges (and male athletes) were punished because they couldn't change human biology or evolution.