I said:
>>To the contrary; by its very nature, Title IX applies to both men's and
>>women's athletics.  If a school currently has gender equity - i.e., as
>>close as possible to X% of the varsity athletics opportunities being for
>>the gender that makes up X% of the school's population - then raising a
>>women's hockey team to varsity status would indeed violate Title IX unless
>>another women's team were eliminated or a men's team were added as well.
 
Kirk replied:
>You must know that gender equity is not a reality at 95% of the colleges in
>the United States.  To be in compliance with Title IX, a school must be
>moving in the direction of gender equity at an acceptable rate.  Cornell,
>for example, is doing just that but they are not even close to having equal
># of opportunities for (or %) for men and women.  This is true of the vast
>majority of schools.  Brown is currently in violation of Title IX because
>they made an enormous jump toward equity several years ago but in recent
>years their forward progress has been deemed unsatisfactory.  In reality,
>they are closer to equity than any other Ivy.
 
Pat also contributed comments which, for brevity's sake, I won't quote here.
 
Somehow, some of you have managed to misinterpret what I've said as some
sort of philippic in support of Title IX.  It was not.  My opinion of Title
IX will remain my own business, mostly because I don't feel this is the
right forum for a discussion of its merits and drawbacks.
 
The original post from Nathan implied that he believed Title IX didn't
apply to women's athletics - that adding a women's varsity hockey team
could not have negative consequences related to Title IX.  This is simply
not true, and that is all I really wished to point out.
 
I'm well aware that my example of a college that "currently has gender
equity" is extremely uncommon at the moment, but that is irrelevant.  Title
IX applies equally to women's and men's athletics.  It requires that if the
ratio of students on your campus is X% males to Y% females, then the
opportunities to participate in varsity athletics must have a ratio as
close as possible to X% for males to Y% for females - or, as Kirk said,
that the college be moving toward that goal at a reasonable rate.
 
If adding a women's varsity hockey team tilted the ratio in favor of women,
that would be just as much a violation of Title IX as any current imbalance
in favor of men.
 
And that is true regardless of what your opinion of Title IX's existence
may be.
 
Jeffrey Anbinder '94
Reunion Campaign Officer
Cornell University Development
 
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