Title ix alive and well

[maj]

Why Johnny isn't going to college

By Phyllis Schlafly

 

Jan 16, 2006

 

 

This year's spectacular Rose Bowl game attracted a phenomenal 35.6 million viewers because it featured what we want: rugged men playing football and attractive women cheering them on. Americans of every class, men and women, remained glued to their television sets and nearly 95,000 spectators watched from the stands.

 

The runaway success of this game proved again that stereotypical roles for men and women do not bother Americans one bit. Political correctness lost out as all-male teams battled and women cheered.

 

It's too bad that male sports are being eliminated on most college campuses. Except for Texas, USC, and a few other places, radical feminism rules in the athletic departments at the expense of popular male sports.

 

Feminists oppose anything that is all-male or all-female unless it's gay marriage.

They won't be able to ban the Rose Bowl anytime soon, but the Feminist Majority Foundation posts this warning on its Web site: "By encouraging boys to become aggressive, violent athletes, and by encouraging girls to cheer for them, we perpetuate the cycle of male aggression and violence against women."

 

Meanwhile, feminists are censoring out hundreds of traditional manly college sports teams. If your favorite college once had a wrestling, baseball or track team, check again: there's a good chance it has been eliminated.

 

Several years ago, Howard University Athletic Director Sondra Norrell-Thomas announced the elimination of both its wrestling and baseball teams on the same day.

It should surprise no one that Howard University's male enrollment has dropped to only 34 percent compared to 66 percent female.

 

On June 2, 1997, the feminist National Women's Law Center announced that it would file a complaint against Boston University, the fourth largest private school in the nation, over its sports programs. Within months, BU ended the football team that had been in existence for 91 years.

 

It is no surprise that male enrollment at Boston University is now down to 40 percent. One transfer student expressed his dismay in the student newspaper upon learning that his new school has 16,000 undergraduates but no football team.

In the entire state of Washington, there is no longer a single major college wrestling team, despite wrestling's huge popularity in high schools. Wrestling is one of the least expensive sports, requiring almost no equipment and having a low risk of injury, but feminists are working to eliminate all masculine sports.

 

The few colleges that have held firm against feminist pressure continue to attract males. Penn State, for example, has kept its superb programs in football, wrestling, baseball and track, and enjoys a 55 percent to 45 percent male-to-female enrollment.

 

Mean-spirited feminists recently demanded the resignation of 79-year-old football coaching great Joe Paterno because he spoke in sympathy of an opposing team's player accused of sexual assault. There was nothing offensive in Paterno's comments and 89 percent in an online AOL poll sided with him, but just a few feminists with a fax machine will smear anyone in their war against football.

 

The lack of college sports teams and camaraderie makes many high school boys wonder, "Why bother going to college?" Despite the bloated price of college tuition, college doesn't even offer the sports opportunities that they enjoyed in their poorer high schools.

 

The Rose Bowl proved that public demand is for all-male sports, not female contests. Boys do not want to go to a college that eliminates the macho sports, and that is true even if the boy does not expect to compete himself.

 

The effects of the feminists' attack on men's sports are now coming home to roost. By the time this year's college freshmen are seniors, the ratio will be 60 percent women to 40 percent men, and women are now crying that there are not enough college-educated men to marry.

 

China's brutal one-child policy has artificially created millions of young men for whom no wives are available. Right here at home, the feminists have created millions of college-educated women for whom no college-educated men are available, and the trend is getting steadily worse.

 

Part of the change in the ratio of male to female college students is due to the ruthless interpretation of Title IX by the radical feminist bureaucrats in the administrations of former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Unfortunately, President George W. Bush and Secretary of Education Rod Paige chickened out when they were presented with an opportunity to remedy the mischief.

 

Congress should step into the gap and stop funding colleges that terminate men's sports to meet arbitrary feminist quotas. Congress should imitate its action in passing the Solomon Amendment that tells colleges they will lose federal funding if they discriminate against military recruiters.

 

Congress should tell colleges they will lose federal funding if they discriminate against men's sports. The American people clearly want male football, baseball, track and wrestling, and colleges that cut these sports should be cut out of the federal budget.

 

 

Phyllis Schlafly is the President and Founder of the Eagle Forum.

[intothechance]

feminists stink

[texas23]

female sports are important,,,,to those who participate, but really, not a lot more than that. It is a great way to have girls participate in team activities.

 

It should never, ever take away the chances for others to join and participate in team sports.

 

This is a not even a trend anymore, it is a reality of the American way of life, policical correctness gone too far; i.e. we must have as many places for women sports as there are for men, or at least the same percentage of enrollement in the institution, even if the women are not asking for it.

 

In a word, stupid.

[gtsw]

Unfortunately, Title IX has had more to do with the eradication of men's college athletic programs than it has creating more opportunities for women.

Colleges certainly own a portion of the blame for pulling the plug on programs like men's wrestling because it was the path of least resistance for them. In my humble opinion, no sport builds character and discipline that translates into other areas of life more than our sport does. The current interpretation of title IX has created an injustice that my two sons have to live with, since programs are so few and far in between for all but the elite level wrestler.

[pattonboysdad]

Unfortunately, Title IX has had more to do with the eradication of men's college athletic programs than it has creating more opportunities for women.

Colleges certainly own a portion of the blame for pulling the plug on programs like men's wrestling because it was the path of least resistance for them. In my humble opinion, no sport builds character and discipline that translates into other areas of life more than our sport does. The current interpretation of title IX has created an injustice that my two sons have to live with, since programs are so few and far in between for all but the elite level wrestler.

 

i could not agree more...i have three boys(14, 13, 10 yrs old) that LOVE wrestling...we even have a wrestling mat in our garage for them to go at it ... and they would love to wrestle in college...but...what i know (and they don't yet) is that their chances are slim to none unless they are at a level that few get too...especially when we are from a state that is not known (but is improving greatly) for wrestling...

 

has the whole u.s. wrestling community ever locked arms to try and influence and change this title nine thing???

 

sad pattonboysdad

[takedown3]

i could not agree more...i have three boys(14, 13, 10 yrs old) that LOVE wrestling...we even have a wrestling mat in our garage for them to go at it ... and they would love to wrestle in college...but...what i know (and they don't yet) is that their chances are slim to none unless they are at a level that few get too...especially when we are from a state that is not known (but is improving greatly) for wrestling...

 

has the whole u.s. wrestling community ever locked arms to try and influence and change this title nine thing???

 

sad pattonboysdad

 

Dennis Hastert, the current Speaker of the House, was a very successful high school wrestling coach. He and other congressmen are aware of the damage done by Title IX but haven't done much to help. Here's another article about what happening and not happening to save men's college sports.

 

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comm...avora013103.asp

[BuckLateral]

i could not agree more...i have three boys(14, 13, 10 yrs old) that LOVE wrestling...we even have a wrestling mat in our garage for them to go at it ... and they would love to wrestle in college...but...what i know (and they don't yet) is that their chances are slim to none unless they are at a level that few get too...especially when we are from a state that is not known (but is improving greatly) for wrestling...

 

has the whole u.s. wrestling community ever locked arms to try and influence and change this title nine thing???

 

sad pattonboysdad

 

Set forth below is a letter I found back in 2003 on another site, written by a former wrestler to the AD of Binghampton University when that school was considering whether to keep its men's wrestling program or make it another casualty of Title IX. Since Title IX is the topic of this post, this seemed an appropriate place to resurrect this letter . I don't think the author would mind since this is a wrestling message board and his letter is one of the better written and more passionate letters, opinion, articles, etc. in support of wrestling that I have come across.

 

.....................................................................................................................

 

President Lois deFleur

Athletic Director Joel Thirer

Binghamton University

 

I was disappointed in your decision to end men's wrestling.

 

I am a parent and an amateur wrestling fan.

 

I attended college in the early 70's where my interests in language and media developed into a career in communication. The opportunity that I was given to discover personal interest and cultivate professional capacity is rarely available today because I was attending college as a wrestler.

 

My daughter is a runner. She has a full scholarship and will get her education because she has capacity, understands work ethic and has opportunity.

 

I have a son who is a wrestler. His high school varsity success included all-state honors in three different wrestling styles and qualification for our state's national team three times. As good as he is, he has no college opportunity to wrestle due to the paucity of teams on American campuses.

 

But the argument for maintaining wrestling opportunity for interested students is greater than scholarships to pay tuition. It speaks to the personal lessons both male and female athletes learn from this most difficult yet satisfying of individual sports.

 

Wrestling is the most physically and psychologically grueling of sports. It is defined by pain, determined through discipline and brutal in its feedback. The one-on-one combative nature of the sport and the unavoidable exhaustion experienced during workout and matches combine to shine the brightest of spotlights on personal character.

 

No other sport reflects such a powerful correlation between work and success as wrestling. Wrestling is the most liberating of sports because it is the most fair. Personal work ethic is paramount and success for athletes of every size is possible. In team sports natural athleticism, size and speed claim precedent before desire. In wrestling, diligence, effort and tenacity create a place for any athlete willing to stay in the room and work. Every coach knows wrestlers who reach astounding success through sheer force of will.

 

Wrestling offers guaranteed pain, extreme fatigue and potential humiliation but thousands stay with it through college and beyond. Why? Because wrestlers find a deep significance in how the experience of wrestling defines them to themselves. When an athlete musters the self-control required to practice every day, the endurance to last the entire season, the strength of will to finish every practice and match, the integrity to engage in battle and the courage to put his or her win/loss record on the line every time she steps on the mat soon discovers something very valuable about herself. Wrestlers learn that they are more than the score of a match, the outcome of a call or the result of a battle. Wrestlers like wrestling because of what it reveals to them about themselves.

 

No other sport mirrors life like wrestling. No game is experienced as personally as a wrestling match. Few sports reach so deep into the soul of its competitors. There is not much glory in wrestling but there is much gain. For wrestlers replace weak bodies with strong; trade insecurity for courage, and exchange anger for honor.

 

Wrestlers have shown me courage, humility, tenacity and bravery.

 

Wrestling is a teacher and sometimes her lessons are harsh. When we seek victory and are handed defeat we must remember that both extremes, the ecstasy and the agony, are opposing mirrors of the same reflection. Without risk we can never know glory. The lessons of maturity are seared on our souls in the furnace of consequence.

 

Everyone who wrestles, who achieves, who becomes greater than they thought they could, everyone who truly grows does so through personal effort.

 

Why does a university exist if not to create environment and opportunity that produces community leaders and societal servants?

 

Wrestling is a place that nurtures the qualities of personal responsibility and individual accomplishment that create substance in our workforce, family environments and society.

 

Please reconsider removing this powerful and effective teacher from your learning environment.

 

Regards, Michael Clapier

[Crossings]

Wow.... this really made me think back to a number of college visits I had (Davidson, Wake Forest, Vanderbilt) in which male tour guides openly said they never even considered the possibility of attending a lot of really good schools because of Title IX casualties. That's ridiculous. Make the sports available to both sexes, but I mean.... lets not be naive. Which programs are bringing in the money?

[delaWarr]

Over a decade ago, a university in the Mid-West added a women's rowing team to the athletic program. They imported at least some experienced athletes from the Mid-Atlantic coastal region to compete on the waterways coursing through the rich corn fields of the area.

 

....an illustration of taking action to meet an artificial quota demand, rather than using the rational in-house student need prong of Title IX.

Edited January 26, 2006 by delaWarr

[tnsmokediver]

A friend of mine is the athletic trainer for a small callege in Oregon. Oregon Tech maybe.....anywho....He told me that there was a rumor that his school was possibly starting a wrestling program because of Title IX. It seems that there was over abundance of females involved in sports out there. Hopefully we can get Title IX to work FOR the wrestling community in this case.

[Red Rebels]

Here is the other side of the story. Oh, and by the way Title IX applies to Seconday Schools Also. This is from USA Today in 2002.

 

Title IX hits Middle America

By Erik Brady, USA TODAY

OWASSO, Okla. — This old railroad town north of Tulsa incorporated as a city in 1972 — the same year, as it happens, that Congress passed a civil rights act known as Title IX. The new city and the new law would cross paths again in 1996, when a Title IX complaint was brought against Owasso High School by some of its own.

Jamie German, salutatorian of the Class of 2002, was still in elementary school then. She never thought much about Title IX until it came up last month in her American history class.

"We were learning about the impact it has had on society," the soccer captain says, "and then I just kind of realized the impact it has had on me."

Title IX is old enough to be in history books: The federal law turns 30 this month. In the popular imagination, it has come to stand for equality in women's collegiate sports. But the law applies to all schools that receive federal funds, not just colleges, and to all aspects of them, not just athletics. Now, as the law heads toward middle age, high school sports is emerging as a common battleground.

This is the story of one suburban high school in Middle America and of one Title IX complaint. It is also the story of Jamie German, who benefited from it, and of firefighter Ron Randolph, who filed it, and of a small jewel of a softball field, which got built because of it.

The Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights reports that about one in four athletic complaints involve colleges these days. Ray Yasser, an attorney who has filed 14 complaints against high schools in Oklahoma — Owasso being the first — likes this new emphasis on interscholastic sports.

"We've been doing things backward for too many years," Yasser says. "Girls get their start in school sports in middle schools and high schools. We need change at the grass-roots level."

Sometimes that means grass roots literally: Owasso built a $150,000 softball field as part of the settlement of its complaint. "We laid the sod for this field," says all-state third baseman Tricia Hubbard. "I did that patch right there, by the first-base line."

Hubbard graduated last month in Owasso's first class to play four seasons on the field. She will play softball on scholarship at Bacone College in Muskogee, Okla. All-state second baseman Natalee Plumlee will play on scholarship at Northeastern Oklahoma A&M. German will play soccer on scholarship at Tulsa University.

"I started playing in second grade," German says. "It's so much a natural part of my life that I can't really imagine what it would be like if I didn't play. I wouldn't be me."

Cultural sea change

At the college level, Title IX is often styled as a titanic conflict pitting men's sports against women's sports. Many colleges have chosen to drop men's teams — roughly 400 of them — as a means of compliance. At the high school level, though, boys sports are seldom dropped — none in Oklahoma, according to Yasser. "I sleep well at night," he says.

Owasso's male and female athletes don't see each other as the enemy. To the contrary, they often see each other as love interests. Hubbard went to the prom with Oklahoma State football player Corey Curtis, an Owasso graduate. German went with fellow soccer player John Sellers.

"In my day, football players dated cheerleaders," says LeighAnn Hubbard, Tricia's mother. "Nowadays it seems like athletes go with athletes."

That signals a cultural sea change, says Valerie Bonnette, who runs a consulting firm on Title IX cases. "Thirty years ago, boys thought girls playing sports was weird," she says. "Now they think it's cool."

There's nothing about that in history books. Athletes find this lesser-known aspect of Title IX utterly unremarkable. "A lot of soccer guys go out with soccer girls," Sellers says. "I think you find athletes dating athletes everywhere. It only makes sense: You have a lot in common."

That includes, in Owasso's case, a common nickname. Boys teams are the Rams. Girls teams are the Lady Rams — an oxymoron of anatomic impossibility.

"We thought about addressing it in the complaint," says Yasser, laughing. "But you have to pick your spots. This didn't seem like one worth fighting."

A dad filed the complaint

Ron Randolph is far from a feminist. He mostly votes Republican. He does not think girls should play on boys teams. And he thinks women should not be firefighters, although he works with good ones in the Tulsa Fire Department.

But he firmly believes that girls should get the same benefits as boys to play on their own teams. The good news: Daughter Mimi's Lady Rams won the state softball championship for Owasso in 1995. The bad: Her team played home games at an older city park while the boys baseball team had a dandy diamond on campus.

"You pay your taxes, and the boys get all the money," Randolph says. "I talked to the school board about that and they said, 'If you don't like it, sue us.' So we did. And the rest is history."

It wasn't as simple as that. Much of the money that was raised for the diamond came not from taxes but from a baseball booster club that hustled sponsorships around town. If the boys had a better facility, they felt like they had worked hard for it. But Title IX does not make exceptions for money raised by boosters. The law requires that male and female athletes be treated equitably.

The parents of seven softball players filed a complaint in February 1996, just months after Owasso won its state championship. Attorneys Sam Schiller and Yasser asked Randolph to be lead plaintiff. He agreed, though he feared some kind of retribution.

"Some parents owned businesses and didn't want their names on the suit," Randolph says. "I bought a locking gas cap and a tracer for my phone. But none of that ever happened. It turned out we had a lot of closet supporters. Sure, you'd get 'The Look' from some people in the grocery store, but others would come up and say, 'Way to go.' "

Mimi was a sophomore then. She says a few baseball players told her they needed "Title X" to protect their interests. And she says she could feel tension when talking with some administrators. But mostly, Mimi says, she got support. "Teachers took me aside and said, 'Good for you' and 'It's about time.' "

The complaint said that the school district had discriminated against Owasso's female athletes in terms of facilities, publicity, opportunities, pay for coaches and scheduling of games and practices.

In a matter of months, the two sides came to an agreement that was signed by a federal judge. The district agreed to build a softball stadium, add a girls volleyball team and pay coaches of girls teams more, among other things.

Mimi Randolph never got to play on the new field. It would have been built in a year if voters had passed a bond issue that fell a fraction shy of the required 60%. The district had to build it anyway, but it took two years, by which time the bond issue passed anyway.

"My brother, the math whiz, figured out we missed by four votes" out of 1,319, Randolph says. "I was disappointed, but it was OK. When you file a Title IX complaint, it's never about what can happen for you. It's always about the girls who come later."

Randolph played catcher on the Tulsa University softball team that went 48-16 this season, a 35-game improvement over the year before, the best turnaround in the NCAA this season. She expects to graduate next spring and hopes to coach in college or high school.

"Maybe even at Owasso," she says. "Wouldn't that be something?"

Did the school discriminate?

Owasso High was founded around 1909. Its sports teams were mostly for boys until the 1970s, when girls teams slowly became more prominent, a progression not unlike many other public schools across the land. Owasso High did not think of itself as a place that discriminated against half of its student body.

"I still don't feel like we discriminated against anybody," Principal Rick Dossett says. "But Title IX is the law, and we've come to accept the reality of the unfairness of it. There's the right way and the legal way, and unfortunately we have to go the legal way, even if it's an overwhelming burden on the community."

By that Dossett says he means the community was required to spend money on sports that he feels would have been better-spent on academics. He calls attorneys Schiller and Yasser "vultures, blood-sucking parasites. They're making an industry out of this thing." Dossett also blasts others: "Federal judges, man alive, they are arrogant SOBs. They think they walk on water."

Attorney Karen Long, who represented the school district, sees it differently. She believes that the district did discriminate, though never intentionally. She says that when she saw the city park where the softball team played and compared it with the diamond on campus where the baseball team played, it became clear to her that the complaint was valid at least on that point.

"There were some hard feelings at first," Long says. "But once you get over the pain of being told you're not doing it right, I think the school district wanted to do better for girls. I'm very pleased to say that the attitude in Oklahoma is, 'Let's roll up our sleeves and get it done.' "

Now, to hear athletic director Wally Poplin tell it, Owasso High is living happily ever after. "We have a strong sports program," he says. "We had 10 athletes make all-state teams this year — four boys, seven girls. It so happens our girls program is stronger than our boys at the moment. But that kind of swings back and forth. We're very proud of both of them."

Hooking it up

Shane Eicher will begin his third season as coach of the Owasso softball team next fall. He used to be an assistant coach in the football program; football still reigns as undisputed king of campus.

Eicher says the softball field is fabulous, with its lights, scoreboard and all-dirt infield. He says it matches nicely with the boys diamond next to it.

"I was terrified when I made the switch because I had never coached girls," Eicher says. "Now I would never go back. I love coaching girls. They work so hard. They want to please. And they really hook it up."

Hook it up? "That means they're competitive — they get after it, just like the boys."

Center fielder Jennifer Davidson gets after it. She will be a sophomore next fall. What does Title IX mean to her?

"I've heard of it," she says tentatively. "I know it's something important. But I don't really know what it is."

When you're 14, half a dozen years is a lifetime ago. She brightens when told Title IX, in a sense, is what built the softball field — her field, home of the Lady Rams.

"It did?" Davidson says. "Well, then that's good. Because we deserve it."