Author: Joshua Thompson
The National Review Online has an excellent piece by Eric Pearson of the College Sports Council. The College Sports Council is a national coalition of coaches, athletes, parents, and fans who are devoted to preserving and promoting the student athlete experience. The CSC is the leading organization working for reform of Title IX regulations that have led to the widespread elimination of opportunities for male athletes.
As Mr. Pearson points out in the article, since 1995, Title IX has become a tool for "gender-quota activists" to eliminate varsity sports in the name of "proportionality." Much like "race-quota activists" use Title VII, gender-quota activists use the raw percentages of men and women on university campuses to determine the exact percentage of sports that have to be offered at the university. If a university is not meeting that percentage, the activists sue alleging that the university is discriminating. Thus, much like cities affected by Title VII litigation, universities beat the gender quota activists to the punch -- by eliminating male sports because of imperfect percentages. It is quite sad that well-intentioned civil rights legislation is used by the "activists" to eliminate non-discriminatory opportunities for all races and both sexes.
Mr. Pearson writes:
The intent of Title IX is more than laudable. No one should be denied opportunities on the basis of his or her sex, and nobody wants to go back to the days when female athletes had to put up with poor facilities and limited opportunities to participate. But instead of letting demand drive colleges’ decisions (and with most student bodies around 60 percent female, they have a strong incentive to meet women’s needs), Title IX requires colleges to maintain an exact and artificial proportionality, regardless of whether male and female interest levels are the same (which they usually aren’t).
The entire piece is worth reading. Unfortunately, these proportionality arguments are not going away. The activists disguise blatant discrimination as equality, and threaten officials with litigation until their faux equality is adopted. This is not to say that men's sports deserve more attention than women's sports, quite the contrary, but a university should offer athletics based on interest in participation, not the raw percentages of sexes at the school. Mr. Pearson, and the College Sports Council, should be applauded for their stand against Title IX discrimination.
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