Serving Boone, Blowing Rock, Banner Elk, and other towns of the North Carolina High Country
Founded 05-05-05
May 15, 2008 issue
Editor’s Note: USA Today on Tuesday of this week reported on recent court rulings that “reflect ongoing tension over the law that bans sex discrimination at schools receiving federal funds.” In this series of articles, High Country Press examines gender equity in sports at ASU.
Story by Bernadette Cahill
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 is a keystone of anti-sex-discrimination legislation in America. It regulates and has influenced such diverse areas as faculty staffing and administration in universities, and non-traditional curricula for girls and boys in high schools. Signed into law by President Nixon, Title IX is responsible for girls being able to take shop and boys to study home economics.
Title IX is also the primary federal law barring sex discrimination in sports programs. Since it became law, Title IX has given women and girls more opportunities actually to play sports, to receive scholarships and also to gain the benefits—health, emotional and academic—that sports participation generates.
Title IX has, in particular, prompted considerable change in varsity sports.
“In 1972, fewer than 32,000 women competed in intercollegiate athletics. Women received only 2 percent of schools’ athletic budgets, and athletic scholarships for women were nonexistent. Today, the number of college women participating in competitive athletics is nearly five times the pre-Title IX rate,” the National Women’s Law Center stated in a report to the Commission on Opportunity in Athletics in August 2002.
Universities are required to report annually the figures of women’s participation in sports and they reveal how ASU measures up to compliance and other issues affecting gender equity in varsity sports.
ASU Committed to Equity But Walking A Tight Rope
ASU’s athletics program for academic year 2006-07 was in compliance with Title IX, but the task of keeping within the law that mandates equity for the sexes in institutions receiving federal funding is a walk on a tight rope. The statistics reported each year from 1995-96 onwards under the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act (1994) show inconsistency in complying with the law.
Under Title IX, a reporting institution can choose one of three ways—called prongs—to demonstrate compliance in athletics, based on the Department of Education’s 1979 policy interpretation. The first is to have the same percentage of women on varsity teams as in the undergraduate student body. The second is to demonstrate a “history and continuing practice” of expanding athletic opportunities for women. The third is for a school to demonstrate it is “fully and effectively accommodating the interests and abilities” of female students.
ASU establishes its compliance through prong three, as reflected in scholarship statistics, said Debbie Richardson, Senior Associate Athletics Director at ASU. The U.S. Department of Education’s policies for Title IX specify that the proportion of scholarships a college gives to female athletes must be the same, to within 1 percent, as the proportion of women on varsity teams.
In 2006-07, the percentage of women’s scholarships compared to their participation in sports was +0.17 percent. ASU, therefore, was in compliance with Title IX.
Reporting of the statistics began in the current form at the end of academic year 1997-98. Since then, ASU’s scholarship figures repeatedly come close to what the law requires, and were even on the positive side between 1997 and 2000. In 1997-98, ASU’s compliance for women was +0.47 percent and for the two academic years 1998 to 2000, the scholarship percentages discriminated slightly against male athletes—by 0.4 percent in 1998-99 and by 0.68 percent in 1999-00. In 2000, however, the percentages went negative again for women, and 2000-01 and 2006-07 are the only academic years when ASU has been in strict compliance with Title IX.
These statistics reveal the fine line that compliance based on scholarship awards represents. With only a 1 percent tolerance, it is very easy for an educational institution to teeter out of balance either way.
ASU “is committed to insuring equitable participation and treatment of men, women and minorities in intercollegiate athletics through its athletics administration, staff, coaches, programs and policies,” states the student athlete guide.
Although not relevant for the 2006-7 academic year for scholarships, the significance of being non-compliant is that, if a female student complained, ASU would have to prove its non-compliance was not because of discrimination against the overall women’s sport program, said Richardson.
“If non-compliance in scholarships occurs,” said Richardson, “it can happen because, for example, a coach doesn’t use all the money earmarked for scholarships, or a recruited student decides not to attend [ASU] and it is too late in the process for the coach to recruit someone else of quality.”
Before Title IX, few, if any, sports scholarships existed for women—and providing college opportunities through scholarships is one of the law’s benefits for women.
Dianna Thomas, a 22-year-old senior from Mobile, Ala. majoring in exercise science, credits Title IX with enabling her to attend school out of state.
“I’d never have come [to ASU] if I hadn’t gotten a volleyball scholarship,” she said. “That’s definitely a plus about Title IX for me.”
Ashley Norris, a former Watauga High School senior, recruited on a running scholarship, competes in cross-country and track and field. “[Title IX] is a good thing and it is trying to make [sports] equal,” she said. “It looks as if it works for the most part.”
But Norris experienced the downside of being on an athletic scholarship—it took the fun out of running for her, and, with her parents’ agreement, she actually dropped the scholarship.
“I want to run because I want to run. [The scholarship] turned [running] into a job,” she said. “It was too much of a pressure.”
Thomas’s sport also benefits from Title IX. “[Volleyball] wouldn’t be as big and pushed and well financed if it wasn’t for Title IX,” she said.
That benefit doesn’t apply to every sport, she added. She said that some sports have fewer opportunities and some sports have felt they haven’t been always treated fairly. “But I feel that things are basically OK. I don’t see any major equity issues.”
Thomas likes playing for male coaches better than for females, but also likes having female assistant coaches because “they understand some issues better.”
She said that Title IX is not discussed very much on campus and doesn’t think it has affected relationships with male athletes.
But Norris thinks it would be interesting if the playing field could be leveled even more—and women could have a football team if that’s a game they want to play.