[EDEQUITY] NCAA website & Title IX

From: Rigsby,Kathleen (rigsby@cahs.colostate.edu)
Date: Fri Dec 01 2000 - 12:06:19 EST


Thank you, Rebecca. It helps to hear from someone who has the experience.
I
seldom enter into the fray, but enough is enough.

And if anecdotal information does not satisfy the skeptics, I suggest that
they look at the NCAA website and the recently released information on
expenditures by division in the NCAA. There is no question that football
is
a factor in those figures and there is also no question that men's sports
are better funded that women's. Even for Division III schools WITHOUT
football, men's program in 1999 accounted for 49 percent of athletic
expenditures; women's programs 24 percent of expenditures with a joint 31
percent in non-gender related expenditures such as administration. The
figures are even more glaring in Division I-A where the expenditure is
$31,000 per male athlete versus $18,000 per female athlete.

Title IX, by the way, never has required equal expenditures and if schools
are using Title IX as the reason for eliminating mens'/boys' sports, it is
a
red herring of the first water--excuse the pun--particularly when the
funding for men's and boy's sports continues to grow for football and other
sports. Perhaps those who advocate that Title IX "hurts" boys need to also
advocate how and by whom athletic budgets are spent, rather than blaming
females for claiming a small and over-due access to those budgets.

Those who claim that the academic needs of males has been neglected since
Title IX, need to revisit that claim. Almost forty years ago a book title
WHY JOHNNY CAN'T READ hit the market and those of us who work
professionally
in gender equity have long advocated for the needs of boys without the
benefit of the American Enterprise Institute or morning talk shows. Many
of
us who would bring the needs of boys to the forefront would be greeted with
reactions that ranged from the hostile to the absurd--but the underlying
messages were that boys were doing just fine and that any effort on their
behalf would make "sissies" out of them. Read the NATION OF VIPERS if you
want some of that history. It has taken the successes--as incomplete as
they
are--of girls and the tragic school violence to finally get males the
attention they needed and deserved.

It will be the Title IX legislation that will provide males their legal
remedy--and they have always had it, even if the adults in their lives have
been myopic as to their needs. Our children, male AND female, need the
protection that Title IX affords. The "good ole days" of caning at British
schools (the British schools being a favorite remedy of Hoff Summers), of
Teddy Roosevelt, and Phillip Wylie were very bad days for our sons and our
daughters. Think twice before advocating a return.



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