Ross writes:
>when has a mindlessly arbitrary quota ever been a good thing?  each school
>ought to find out how many of its students are interested in and can compete at
>the level of "varsity athletics" and establish programs accordingly.  if 40%
>are women, fine.  If 15% or 80% are women, that's fine too.
 
Mark writes:
>   To answer your question about quotas, they possibly are a bad thing,
>   but athletic departments have systematically marginalized
>   women's athletics for a long time.
 
I'm not going to comment on the policy itself, but while it may not have a
bad effect on men's hockey, think about what it's doing to women's hockey.
Northeastern virtually destroyed its formerly tops-in-the-nation women's
hockey program after a survey whose population was supposed to be all women
students showed that women's hockey ranked something like 19th out of 20
sports in interest by these students.  They were asked which sports they'd be
most likely to play.  Since there isn't a huge interest in women's hockey
among Americans, if this policy is followed by NC$$ ADs then it appears to
herald the decline of women's hockey at the college level.  If this is what
we want, then fine, just be aware of the consequences of surveying students
and establishing programs accordingly.  If this were done for all school
organizations, a lot of minority clubs and things like radio, etc. would
probably be wiped out and people would scream.
 
Also, Northeastern conveniently ignored the fact that the international
success of its women's program gave the school not only an athletic foothold
in Canada (where women's hockey is huge) but also an academic one, and
Canadian students who wish to study in the US are now aware of the school and
its reputation, where previously outside of New England everyone thought
Northeastern was in Chicago.  ("Oh, you mean that's NorthWESTern!")
 
 
- mike, back from the sleeping except for heather's message Sunday