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(December 22, 2003)
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A Title IX issue at UC Davis
DAVIS, CA (December 2 2, 2003) By
"eliminating women's participation and scholarship opportunities in
wrestling," UC Davis is guilty of gender discrimination in
violation of the landmark 1972 federal legislation guaranteeing equal
access to college sports, according to a lawsuit filed this week.
"You don't drop an opportunity for
women unless you're going to replace it with another opportunity, and
they haven't done that," attorney Kristen Galles said Friday
by telephone.
Galles filed the suit Thursday in
Sacramento federal court on behalf of four women; three wrestled for the
varsity squad before women were eliminated from the team in 2001, and
the other woman went to Davis expecting to be on the team.
"More than 25 years later, UC
Davis still does not fully comply with Title IX, and instead went
backward with the issuance of its no-females-in-wrestling directive in
2001," Galles said.
UC Davis spokeswoman Julia Ann
Easley said Friday the university has not received a copy of the
suit and will have no comment until it has been reviewed.
The suit filed on behalf of current
students and former wrestlers Arezou Mansourian and Lauren Mancuso seeks
to be certified as a class action, allowing them to represent all
current and future female students who would like to participate in the
wrestling program.
Christine Wing-Si Ng lives in Berkeley.
Nancy Nien-Li Chiang, a Sacramento resident, does not attend UCD now but
plans to return next fall.
Mancuso, a graduate of the all-girls
St. Francis High School in Sacramento and its only wrestler, enrolled at
UCD in fall 2001. She was recruited and awarded financial assistance,
then the university cut women from the program and "reneged on Ms.
Mancuso's athletic scholarship," the suit charges.
In addition to the university and the
UC Board of Regents, the suit names as defendants UCD Chancellor Larry
Vanderhoef, athletic director Greg Warzecka, associate athletic
directors Pam Gill-Fisher and Larry Swanson and associate vice
chancellor Bob Franks.
Galles, a sole practitioner in
Alexandria, Va., is a self-described "big-firm dropout" and
former softball "scrub" at Creighton. She represents female
athletes seeking to enforce their rights under Title IX of the
amendments to federal civil-rights law barring sex discrimination in
education.
Passed by Congress in 1972, the
statute's regulations took effect July 21, 1975. Sponsors of
intercollegiate athletics were required to comply within three years of
the effective date.
The suit against UC Davis is an
outgrowth of a broader national controversy over the impact of Title IX
on college athletics. The law's detractors insist that it imposes quotas
detrimental to all sports.
Universities across the country
continue to cap or cut men's teams, citing a desire not to run afoul of
parts of the statute that focus on gender discrimination.
Schools can demonstrate compliance
in this area by one of three methods:
* Providing opportunities substantially proportionate to each
gender's undergraduates.
* Showing a history and continuing practice of expanding opportunities
for the under-represented sex.
* Fully and effectively accommodating the existing athletic interests
and abilities of the under-represented sex.
The suit declares that UC Davis sports
fall short on all three counts. That is, the ratio of female to male
athletes is not commensurate with the enrollment ratio, the school does
not have a history of expanding opportunities for female athletes, and
it does not fully accommodate the athletic interests and abilities of
its female students, according to the suit. That and this report from
The Sacramento Bee's Denny Walsh
It is a companion suit to one filed in
September by Galles on behalf of Michael Burch, UCD's former wrestling
coach who claims he was fired for supporting the women on his team whose
complaints about their fate drew a federal investigation, heat from a
California assemblywoman and publicity that was not welcomed by school
officials.
Burch's suit is primarily based on the
anti-retaliation provisions of Title IX. It was filed in U.S. Bankruptcy
Court in Sacramento because Burch sought financial protection there
after losing his job June 30, 2001.
He had been UCD's wrestling coach since
September 1995 and had made the lagging program competitive in the
Division I Pacific-10 Conference.
He was named UC Davis Coach of the Year
in 1997 and 2001.
Throughout Burch's six years there --
and for at least two years before that -- UCD accepted male and female
wrestlers on its varsity team.
During his final year, the suit says,
Warzecka and Gill-Fisher told him the women's program was being cut.
"Mr. Burch complained that the
no-female directive was unfair and constituted sex discrimination
against the female wrestlers, and asked that it be rescinded," the
suit says. "Defendants refused."
In March 2001, it says, Swanson wrote
Burch "to congratulate him on his successful wrestling season and
to discuss continuing his employment as head wrestling coach."
The following month, female wrestlers
filed a gender discrimination complaint with the U.S. Department of
Education's Office of Civil Rights. The complaint prompted media
attention, a threat by then-Assemblywoman Helen Thomson, D-Davis, to
withhold state-controlled funds from the school and an investigation by
federal education authorities.
The suit alleges Burch was then
terminated for advocating the position taken by the female members of
his team, and for cooperating with the federal investigators, in
violation of the anti-retaliation provisions of Title IX and the First
Amendment's free-speech guarantee.
In their suit, the women seek an
injunction barring sex discrimination in UCD athletics, reinstating
women to the wrestling program to full varsity status and mandating an
increase in athletic scholarships for women. They also ask for an
unspecified amount of monetary damages.
Burch seeks an injunction reinstating
him as wrestling coach and a lecturer at UCD and an unspecified amount
of monetary damages.
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[Source: The Sacramento Bee's Denny
Walsh]
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