 |
|
|
(June 2, 2002)
Defending Title IX NEW
YORK NY (June 2, 2002) The Bush administration expressed at least
limited support yesterday for the federal law prohibiting sex
discrimination in college sports, asking a federal court in Washington
to dismiss a lawsuit by coaches of men's college teams who said
enforcement of the law was hurting opportunities for male athletes. That
and this report from The New York Times' Tamar Lewin The
National Wrestling Coaches Association filed suit against the Department
of Education in January, saying the guidelines for a federal law known
as Title IX discriminated against low-profile men's sports. Since
then, alumni and student groups from Marquette University, Bucknell and
Yale have joined the suit, charging that the Education Department's
enforcement of the law has produced reverse discrimination, forcing
budget cuts and reducing athletic opportunities for college men in
sports like wrestling, swimming, gymnastics and track. Over
the last week, Washington has been awash in rumors that the Bush
administration is preparing to rethink its Title IX enforcement, with an
eye to softening the requirement that women's sports receive financing
in proportion to the percentage of women on campus. In yesterday's
filing, though, the Justice Department gave no sign of any such plan. Instead,
the government filing raised only procedural problems with the lawsuit,
arguing that the case should be dismissed because even if some
universities wrongly eliminated men's teams in their efforts to comply
with Title IX, only those institutions - and not the court - could
reinstate those teams. The government also said the lawsuit was barred
by the statute of limitations, since it challenges actions taken by the
Department of Education more than six years ago. Women's
advocacy groups said they were troubled that the government brief
offered no praise for Title IX, which in three decades has increased
women's participation in college sports to 157,000 female athletes from
30,000. "It
would have been common for the government to signal its support for
Title IX, even if the case was so flawed for procedural reasons that it
should be dismissed," said Marcia Greenberger of the National
Women's Law Center, in Washington. "We're disappointed by the
silence." Since
the passage of Title IX in 1972, the General Accounting Office has
found, more than 170 wrestling programs have been eliminated, along with
80 men's tennis teams, 70 men's gymnastic teams and 45 men's track
teams. Over
all, the number of men playing college sports has remained relatively
stable, at about 200,000. This
month, the men's track and field teams at Vermont, Tulane and Bowling
Green ran their final races, and people like Ed Kusiak, who has coached
track at the University of Vermont since 1969, resigned themselves to
having only a women's team. Under
a 1995 court ruling, universities could show they were in compliance
with Title IX by meeting what is known as a proportionality test - that
is, showing that their ratio of male to female athletes was nearly equal
to their overall ratio of male to female undergraduates. That and this
report from The New York Times' Tamar Lewin. [Source:
SportsBusinessNews.com]
|
|
|
Contact Us
| Privacy Policy
| About
Us | Home
|
|