What about Universities?

From: Dempsey&Brown (dempsy@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Fri Nov 19 1999 - 15:10:16 EST


John makes an interesting point when he says, "apparently somebody hasn't
gotten around to telling all the universities." I would suggest that they
know but have another agenda. The agenda seems to be to leave the matter to
the "spin doctors." The spinners scapegoat Title IX and forget equity.

When I disagreed with a small state university in Arizona in 1998 after
they blamed Title IX for the loss of the baseball team, I suggested the
Public Information Office tell the truth. The baseball team couldn't
attract a crowd and was improperly established ten years earlier when it
was instituted before the university even approached any semblance of
equity. In another northwest university the compliance plan will cap
participation in men's sports and add minor women's to achieve equity.
 What the plan doesn't say is that the numbers are phony and will cap men's
sports at participation rates that haven't ever been achieved. The fraud
was exposed when several recent Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act
disclosures were made public.

This isn't about compliance but about the politics of compliance and those
moves are way beyond the numbers' game. I always hate to see men's sports
cut to achieve equal treatment, but then I didn't ask the universities to
add rowing in states where no high school has a program or fail to add
softball when a team is being built at every high school in any wide spot
in the road. I asked a question recently and am still waiting for OCR (the
big one in DC) to answer: "When is a sport a sport." I dread the
tiddleywinks season because I just know that tiddleywinks is about to be
added as a sport for girls and when no one rushes to participate we will
fall back to the spin doctors and watch as Title IX takes another hit.

Herb Dempsey
dempsy@ix.netcom.com



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