Your Views
Wisconsin State Journal :: FORUM :: B1
Last week, we asked readers what they thought about proposed changes to Title IX, the federal gender equity law in education that has vastly increased women’s participation in sports. Here is what they had to say:
\ Ball dropped on implementation
Title IX has definitely expanded opportunities for women to participate in inter-collegiate sports. Unfortunately, Title IX has made these strides at the expense of sporting opportunities for countless young athletes. Since 1972 there have been more than 442 collegiate wrestling programs dropped. In Wisconsin alone, 12 colleges and universities have dropped wrestling, this at a time when wrestling is the sixth largest high school sport in terms of individual participation.
In a check of the UW-Milwaukee athletic web site, there are seven sporting opportunities for women and six for men, yet UW-Milwaukee decided to drop wrestling. There are countless other examples in other sports.
Title IX is necessary. I’m grateful that, because of Title IX, my daughter will have the opportunity to participate in collegiate athletics if she so desires. However, because Title IX has been applied at the expense of opportunities for those who desire them, Title IX implementation needs to be re-examined. The bar of compliance hasn’t been lowered as last week’s State Journal article suggests. The ball (along with thousands of programs) has been dropped. Equal opportunity should not come at the expense of opportunity.
— Mark Kilcoyne, Janesville
\ Women can’t take the back seat now
In the early 1920s my grandmother, a mother of six boys living in the remote mountains near Leadville, Colo., died before she even got to vote. In 1955 Rosa Parks (a registered voter) refused to move to the back of the bus and was put in jail. In the 1960s I entered high school and asked permission to “get on the bus “for athletes. My friends and I were denied — girls were not allowed to play sports so there was not a “bus “for us.
Now it’s the 2000s and Title IX, which allowed us to “board the bus “in the early 1970s, is being reconsidered. Would it be OK if we females could possibly move to the back of the bus? Well, I’m not moving anywhere, and as a matter of fact, this time I think I might even ask to drive the bus.
— Gaila Hagg Olsen, Black Earth
\ Male minorities hurt by Title IX cuts
As a teacher, coach, former NCAA competitor in a now-extinct men’s athletic program and father of a daughter and a son, I believe I can offer a unique perspective on the issue. My wife and I are grateful for and embrace the intent of Title IX. We want the best opportunities possible for our daughter when she enrolls at any university. Her opportunities however, should not eliminate the opportunities of her peers.
Title IX should protect the rights of all of our citizens. Instead, it has led to quota systems and gender caps which have discriminated against and destroyed athletic opportunities for males. Many of the athletic programs that have been terminated were programs which developed male minority participants, athletes from impoverished communities struggling to achieve higher education. The enforcement of Title IX must protect opportunities for all. The unintended consequences – gender quotas – must be abolished.
— John Mesenbrink, Waukesha
\ Men like competition more than women
When used as a quota requirement, Title IX has proven to be an artificial quota system that has hurt men’s athletic programs more than it has helped women’s. As evidence is the dropping of so many men’s athletic programs since Title IX came to be imposed as a quota. What has made this particularly galling is the fact that it is the men’s sports, such as football, men’s basketball and hockey programs at UW, that are paying for the women’s sports.
While men and women are equal, they are not the same. Men typically are more interested in competitive sports than women are. Jessica Gaudra made that point in her book “Tilting the Playing Field “where she wrote “if boys and girls are in some general way hardwired to pursue different interests and excel in different subjects, then it is time to take a serious look at a federal anti-discrimination law that has come to assume exactly the opposite.”
— Edward G. Olson, Stetsonville
\ Don’t let extremists undo progress
Title IX has provided a wealth of opportunities for women to participate in varsity sports. Unfortunately, those opportunities have come at the expense of several men’s sports at the University of Wisconsin. It was a necessary compromise.
I agree that the e-mail survey accomplishes very little. I also favor leaving well enough alone. As Cheryl Bailey states, “the current UW women’s athletics budget exceeds $9 million. “That number far exceeds the amount of revenue generated by those same sports. Athletics, especially at the Division 1 level, is big business. Expenses must be carefully balanced with revenues. Without revenue-generating sports like football, men’s basketball and men’s hockey, most if not all of the other sports (men’s and women’s) would cease to exist.
Don’t let the extremists on either side of this issue dominate the debate and potentially upset this delicate balance. Instead, let’s work to get all interested parties to agree that tremendous progress has been made in the past 33 years. For either side to risk that progress to pursue a political agenda is wrong headed.
— David J. Rizzo, Madison
\ Push gender equity in classrooms, too?
Unless I am missing something, there is nothing written in Title IX that requires this is to be used for athletics, only for education. Therefore, I believe Title IX has not gone far enough.
The next time the number of women in a women’s history class is more than the number of men, the women should be forced to drop the class or other men should be allowed in the class on scholarship, just like athletics. This would also come in handy in the nursing program; we could then have equal numbers of male and female nurses. It would, after all, be sexist to say that men have less interest in nursing than women.
— Adam M. Guess, Madison
\ Title IX’s successes outweigh its failures
Title IX is not the villain many make it out to be. So many cite the fact that Division 1 schools across the country cut men’s sports programs to come into compliance, but two things need to be pointed out. First, no one said they had to cut men’s programs to come into compliance; they could’ve created an equal number of women’s programs but the schools chose to cut men’s programs.
Second, the number of scholarships college football uses is a far bigger culprit in cutting other men’s scholarships. Division 1 programs often offer more than 50 scholarships for football. That’s as many scholarships as wrestling, fencing, gymnastics and baseball combined. Those same programs were often the ones schools chose to cut.
The success of women’s college sports has carried onto the Olympic level and is recently starting to make progress on a professional level. I think the good Title IX has accomplished far outweighs the bad. It’s difficult to quantify but certainly the inroads in women’s sports could also lead to more women pursuing careers in traditionally male-dominated fields. Can it really be a bad thing to open doors of opportunity regardless of sex?
— Kim Prine, Madison
\ ‘Proportionality’ concept is flawed
Being an ardent supporter of the less popular sports where self-satisfaction is the main reward, I cannot argue with the original intent of Title IX. The real issue is the federal Office of Civil Rights’ current application of proportionality. I believe the current interpretation of Title IX is wrong as it applies to proportionality. The Office of Civil Rights is wrong to force federally-funded colleges and universities to cut male athletic programs to comply.
Cheryl Bailey’s assessment of the Bush administration’s proposed modification to use a student e-mail survey to determine the percentage of students interested in participation is right on target. An e-mail survey process to validate a student population’s interest in athletic programs is a feeble attempt by the administration to circumvent the Title IX Commission’s decisions not to change the status quo. The commission missed a golden opportunity to make reasonable alterations to ensure both female and male participation by not approving minor modifications to the proportionality interpretation.
Determining proportionality based upon female to male student ratios and then applying that percentage to athletic programs is a flawed concept. All of UW-Madison’s combined attempts to comply with the current interpretation of proportionality are significantly better than an e-mail survey.
If a college can demonstrate a reasonable effort to expand the number of female athletes through the addition of teams and by increasing the number of players on the existing teams, such efforts should be considered acceptable. And when schools are forced to cut male programs, even though their efforts to expand female athletic programs are futile because of the lack of female student interest, the reasonable effort theory must prevail.
What exacerbates the frustration among those who wish to participate in less popular college sports is that colleges do not exercise equity when making cuts to the athletic programs. Those sports that do not generate revenue receive the brunt of the mandated cuts.
— Mark Conklin, Milton
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