Column Title IX lessons continue

By Laura Clark

Published: April 2, 2008

It was five on five last Thursday afternoon in the warm Sweet Briar classroom above the gym.
The students, all women, were competing in the old intellectual way: debate.
The subject: Title IX.
Jennifer Crispen’s Intro to the History and Culture of Women’s Sport class was focusing mainly on the athletic aspect of the broad educational legislation.
Enacted in 1972, Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in any educational program or activity receiving any type of federal financial aid.
The athletic aspect of Title IX is “the most visible face” said Crispen. As her students showed, athletics is the area most heavily challenged, researched and emotionally invoked.
When citing the ways in which Title IX has worked, the pro team pointed out connections between success on the playing field (or just being allowed to play) to success in the classroom and workplace. In the last 30 years, participation in sports has increased 400 percent (at the college level) and 800 percent (at the high school level). Male participation during this time has also increased, although not as drastically.
One of the biggest arguments against Title IX, which the con team pointed out, was that men’s programs, especially wrestling, swimming, fencing (those less-popular sports), have been cut at the college level to comply with the law. However, what the pro team was able to argue was that colleges make those choices, which are often a matter of how money is appropriated.
Think of bloated football or men’s basketball budgets.
Fact-wise, college females receive 38 percent of sports operating dollars. Although females may receive more scholarships than males, the monetary value of those scholarships is what matters, and men receive 55 percent of scholarship monies.
The con team pointed out these discrepancies as an example of how Title IX wasn’t working. One sure problem of the law is not its existence, but the way it is both interpreted and implemented.
Change takes time, said the pro team, and this law is closely tied to society’s changing perceptions of women in sports, as well as other arenas. They said Title IX is a step toward equality. In other areas of the law, like general education, women are now the majority of undergraduates in college.
But in sports, the verdict is still muddled. Yes, more women and girls have the opportunity to play sports than ever before. When it comes to college scholarships and recruiting budgets, for example, women are still on the bench.
The Title IX debate will surely continue on the larger scale. As the class drew to a close, it wasn’t clear who had won and who had lost as far as the argument, although maybe the grades will say otherwise.
The final facts: eight of the ten students played sports in high school, and four continued as Vixens.
Winning is relative to the game.

This column would have to be several pages to accurately describe Title IX while dispelling pervasive myths. Check out http://www.titleix.info for more details.