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From:  John T. Whelan[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:  Wednesday, April 23, 1997 1:45 AM
To:  [log in to unmask]
Subject:  Re: Hockey & Title IX
 
        One thing I'm curious about is that in the case in question,
Brown eliminated two men's sports and two women's sports, so I'm a
little unclear on the inequity involved.  Since they're an Ivy and by
definition don't give out scholarships, it's not a scholarship issue.
Perhaps it was the sizes of the rosters; at any rate the men's sports
cut seemed lower-profile than the women's.
 
 
The way the courts see Title IX, schools are supposed to have the same proportion of male and female athletes as there are students.  Say a school has a 50/50 student ratio, but 4 male varsity athletes and 3 female varsity athletes.  Then, in a budget cut, they drop one male and one female athlete.  The ratio of male athletes to female athletes gets worse (from 4:3 to 3:2), and the courts have ruled several times (though I can't site the cases) that, though schools may not be able to be coerced in to fixing the ratio, they aren't allowed to take ANY actions that make the ratio worse.  This seems to preclude cutting women's teams and adding men's teams as long as the ratios are out of whack.  As I understand it, the courts interpretation of Title IX doesn't care about scholarships or the number of teams, it cares about the actual numbers of participants.  That way, if 33% of male students are on a team, a female student would also have a 1 in 3 chance of being on a team - viola, no discrimination (in the courts' eyes).
 
        What I wonder is does Title IX make it any more likely that
women's hockey will get enough varisty teams to start playing for a
national championship.  Or does the numbers game mean women's hockey
will be passed over for a sport that's cheaper?
 
Probably in some cases schools would pass up hockey because it does have a high cost per participant.  It's a lot cheaper for a school to say, add 20 slots for women on the track team than to add a hockey team, and they both help the school equally in terms of Title IX compliance.
 
Here's my .02 on Title IX (warning, major vent coming up):  after 100 years, we're back to Brown v. Board of Education.  The government is mandating separate but equal sports teams for women, and colleges are (unwillingly) playing along, but just like segregated schools, the equality is a farce.  Separate sporting programs for men and women will never be equal, and could not be equal even if men and women had exactly the same athletic ability - just as separate schools for blacks and whites could never be equal.  As schools continue to try to follow the letter of the law, they are limiting opportunities for both male and female athletes.  Case in point: Cornell has a very strong tradition in fencing - its oldest varsity sport.  In fact, the "Coach of the Year" award in the Intercollegiate Fencing Association is named for a former Cornell coach.  Cornell then cut both the men's and women's teams.  The women's team sued (along with women's gymnastics), and were reinstated in an out of court settlement.  Now, some people at Cornell who wish to fence (or tumble) are turned away SIMPLY BECAUSE OF THEIR SEX.  Additionally, I find it hard to believe that a fencing program with "half a team" (nearly all schools' men's and women's fencing programs practice and attend tournaments together) will have nearly the same prestige that a full team would have.  Not to mention difficulties in scheduling against other schools, etc, etc, etc.  By cutting the men's fencing team, Cornell has eliminated opportunities for male fencers and reduced them for female fencers.  This would still be true (but reversed) if it were the women's team who was cut!  It seems to me that nobody in their right mind would believe that this is an equitable solution, and I dare somebody to suggest that the 1972 Congress intended to create such situations.  Bottom line: the courts' interpretations of a law with good intentions have ruined it and given it no hope of achieving its goals.
 
So there.  (I think I mentioned college hockey somewhere in my second paragraph).
 
Robb Newman
Cornell Men's Fencing 91-93
 
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