Women's leaders: Title IX group biased
By
TOM WITOSKY National women's sports
advocates accused U.S. Department of Education officials Thursday of rigging a
national commission's review of federal gender equity regulations. Two officials with University of Iowa ties are involved in the
newest round of debate. Women's sports leaders, including former Iowa women's athletic
director Christine Grant, claim education officials are trying to gut the
30-year-old law requiring comparable opportunity for women in athletics. Athena Yiamouyiannis, executive director of the National
Association for Girls and Women in Sport, said the federal Commission on
Opportunity in Athletics is close to recommending wholesale regulatory changes
in Title IX. The 15-member commission, which includes Iowa athletic director
Bob Bowlsby, has been charged by the Department of Education to recommend
changes to Title IX. Yiamouyiannis said women's leaders are concerned the commission
is poised to let educational institutions roll back the significant increase in
women's sports participation in high school and college. "When commissions are operated with bias, under the guise of
objectivity, they violate the public trust, undermine the public's belief in
good government and create the reality and perception of a prejudiced
examination of the issues," Yiamouyiannis said. "A violation of public
trust has occurred." Women's sports advocates claim, among other things: * Requiring incoming female students to take surveys to measure
interest in athletics is simply unnecessary and would be used solely to limit
female sports participation in college. "With 2.8 million girls playing high school sports, it is
inconceivable that colleges cannot find women to play on the teams they
create," said Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a law professor and three-time gold
medal swimmer in the 1984 Olympics. "That's akin to the National Football
League claiming it can't find enough football players to play in its league,
when each year they draft less than 200 players from a pool of 60,000 NCAA
football players." * Discussions about rewriting proportionality criteria - meaning
athletic participation should be proportional with the undergraduate student
body's overall gender numbers - would allow for greater variances in male and
female participants. * An analysis of several commission proposals indicates that
female participation opportunities in high school and college would be
diminished. Grant said women could lose as many 1.4 million opportunities in
high school and 78,000 in college. "Because scholarships are awarded in direct relation to
participation opportunities, women would lose from $75 million to $189 million
in college scholarship money annually," Grant said. * The education department showed bias by failing to appoint
commission representatives from NCAA Division II and Division III schools, as
well as junior colleges or high schools. Yiamouyiannis said 10 of the 15 commission members were from
Division I schools. "The Department of Education has stacked the deck from the
start with the majority of individuals representing the wealthier, more powerful
institutions who have a vested interest in weakening the law in order to comply
with it," Yiamouyiannis said. * Earlier commission hearings were stacked with a
disproportionate number of experts who oppose the current law and were scheduled
too tightly to allow commission members' in-depth analysis of issues. "Commission members have been left with unanswered questions
about all the data brought to them and even about the law itself,"
Yiamouyiannis said. The commission is scheduled to meet in January to discuss
possible changes in the controversial regulations that critics contend have
forced schools to drop men's sports such as wrestling and gymnastics. Those recommendations will then be considered by federal
education department secretary Ronald Paige. Bowlsby said Thursday that he is hearing complaints from both
sides. "Those striding on the other side of the issue aren't happy
either," Bowlsby said Thursday. "Those folks don't believe the
commission is going nearly far enough." Bowlsby said no one should presume an outcome of the commission's
work. Grant said most athletic department officials are wrongly blaming
gender equity requirements when they claim they have to drop men's sports. "This isn't about Title IX, it is about the excessive
spending and exorbitant salaries paid to coaches," Grant said.
"Instead of having a commission on gender equity, they should have
appointed a commission on how to contain athletic costs." Bowlsby said both sides should be prepared to consider options. "We are still very much in the formulation stage," he
said. "But I will say that those who say the law can't be made better are
just as ill-advised as those who say the law ought to be abolished." |