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NCAA News Archive - 2007
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The opportunities and challenges of Title IX
National sessions allow administrators to air varying perspectives
National sessions allow administrators to air varying perspectives
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By Josh Centor
The NCAA News
The NCAA News
PALO ALTO, California — The last week of April brought together some of the country’s most prominent athletics administrators in a celebration and discussion of Title IX.
On April 28, the Stanford University Center on Ethics hosted a one-day conference called, “Title IX Today, Title IX Tomorrow.” One day later, the NCAA convened its 17th Gender-Equity and Issues Forum in New Orleans.
Both conferences marked the 35th anniversary of the landmark legislation that forbids gender discrimination under any federally funded educational program. Each conference also featured panel discussions on current challenges surrounding Title IX.
“We were trying to provide an opportunity for people to engage these important speakers who have a lot to say and have tremendous experience in the field,” said Dena Evans, former Stanford women’s cross country coach and the organizer of the Title IX event at Stanford. “We wanted to wash away some of the misconceptions about Title IX and have a place where the issues could be discussed freely.”
Topics at the NCAA’s Gender Equity and Issues Forum included the marketing of women’s sports, fund-raising strategies, Title IX coordinators and sexual-harassment issues. Recently retired University of Texas at Austin women’s basketball coach Jody Conradt also talked about her experiences after 38 seasons as a Division I head coach.
The work and life balance issues facing female coaches also were discussed during a general session in New Orleans. The NCAA Executive Committee has formed a subcommittee to take a closer look at the issues. During his hour-long session at the forum, NCAA President Myles Brand focused on ways to increase the number of female coaches and athletics administrators.
NCAA Senior Woman Administrator Joni Comstock, senior vice president for championships, said the sessions amplify the law’s impact on different constituents.
“Title IX has provided opportunities for women students to participate and receive scholarship funding, resources and coaching in intercollegiate athletics as their male counterparts have for over 100 years,” Comstock said. “During the 35-year history of the law, great progress has been made. However in reviewing men’s and women’s intercollegiate sports programs, women still lag in all categories of support. As an athletics administrator for 25 years on Division I campuses, I understand the challenges we face, but we must avoid blaming Title IX for our financial pressures.”
Effect on men’s sports debated
Discussion of Title IX and its implications characterized the one-day forum on the Palo Alto campus. One of the most intense debates involved former Stanford men’s tennis coach Dick Gould, College Sports Council Executive Director Eric Pearson and Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport Director Mary Jo Kane, who participated in a panel titled “Facts, Fiction and the Future: Men’s Sports and Women’s Opportunities.”
Gould, who spent 38 years at the helm of the Stanford program, suggested that Title IX has harmed men’s tennis.
“The demonstrated participation levels in age-group competition are so substantially more in men’s tennis than women’s tennis. I feel a little bit against the wall when women have almost twice as many opportunities for scholarships as men,” Gould said.
The veteran coach is bothered that women’s programs, despite less interest from youth players, are funded with eight scholarships. Men’s teams are limited to 4.5 grants-in-aid.
“Title IX has been a great thing. I have three daughters who played Division I sports and it was a tremendous opportunity that they wouldn’t have had before Title IX,” Gould said. “But we’re practicing on the same courts as the women, who have more scholarships than starters, and that’s just not fair. I don’t think there’s any way you can justify it. It’s reverse discrimination.”
NCAA President Brand said the Association’s legislative bodies have developed scholarship limits based on total opportunities for men and women. In comments about Title IX for the Double-A Zone, the NCAA’s official blog, NCAA President Brand said football presents the biggest challenge. “There’s nothing equivalent to football on the women’s side,” Brand said. “But athletics departments make decisions about what they want to emphasize and universities make decisions about what they want to spend. Every coach would like to see more scholarships.”
Brand is disturbed by Title IX being blamed for a reduction in opportunities for male student-athletes.
“Title IX has made a radical and positive difference in college athletics. I’m not happy with the fact that some schools have come out and blamed Title IX for the cutting of sports,” he said. “They’ve made a decision about how they want to use their resources and that’s their prerogative. Title IX doesn’t require you to cut men’s sports. The DOE made it clear that cutting men’s sports is a disfavored way to comply with Title IX.”
The challenges of Title IX were addressed by Stanford Athletics Director Bob Bowlsby; University of California, Berkeley, Athletics Director Sandy Barbour; and Women’s Sports Foundation Chief Executive Officer Donna Lopiano in a discussion titled, “Strategies for Equality in a Climate of Commercialism.”
Bowlsby, who also has worked as director of athletics at the University of Iowa, shared his thoughts about increased salaries for football and men’s basketball coaches.
“The high salaries affect a lot of our programs. We derive a substantial amount of our operating capital from football and men’s basketball, but that doesn’t mean they have the prerogative to consume all of the resources,” Bowlsby said. “One needs to take careful consideration of how you deal with the rest of your enterprise.”
Anita DeFrantz, a former rowing Olympian and president of the Amateur Athletic Foundation, had a slightly different perspective than Bowlsby.
“You’ve got to stop spending that kind of money. It strikes me as hilarious that these folks can’t succeed without gigantic salaries,” DeFrantz said. “Most schools don’t clear their expenses. There are people not telling the truth about the cost of their programs and that has to stop.”
DeFrantz acknowledged the positive impact Title IX has had during the past 35 years, but said gender equity has yet to be achieved.
“My career is devoted to equal rights. I grew up in a time and place where I saw unnecessary injustice and I’m very sensitive to that. I know it can be fixed,” DeFrantz said.
Lopiano also commented about the growth of women’s sports as a direct result of Title IX.
“When I was a student-athlete in the 1960s, there were no national championships for women and no athletics scholarships for women,” Lopiano said. “It really is like night and day.”
But despite 35 years of success, Lopiano knows there is room for growth. The improvement is great, she said, but equity has yet to be achieved.
“Women are getting $421 million in athletics scholarships today compared to 35 years ago, when they got $100,000,” Lopiano said. “But the bad news is that they’re still $121 million short of what’s going to male college athletes.”
Representatives at both conferences discussed the Department of Education’s 2005 “Additional Clarification of Intercollegiate Athletics Policy,” which allows schools to distribute e-mail surveys to their student body to determine interest in varsity sports.
Brand sees a significant benefit in assembling administrators on a regular basis to discuss gender-equity issues.
“A lot of people come to learn about the latest developments in Title IX and exchange information,” Brand said of the educational sessions. “The issues haven’t gone away. The Department of Education, for various reasons, is still pushing back on Title IX, despite the fact that when women participate in athletics, they get all the benefits men get.”
Title IX’s 35th anniversary is a time to celebrate but not to rest, Brand said.
“We’ve been making excellent progress, but we’re not there, yet. We still have a lot of work to do,” he said.
Federal panel continues examination of survey use
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, a bipartisan agency of the executive branch appointed by the President and Congress, recently sought information about the March 2005 clarification to Title IX issued by the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.
The briefing, entitled “Title IX Athletics: Accommodating Interest and Abilities,” was conducted May 11 in Washington, D.C.
That clarification changed the application of the third prong of a three-part test used to assess whether institutions are complying with Title IX by allowing a survey to determine interest among students. The OCR provided institutions with a sample of an Internet-based survey. The NCAA denounced the clarification when it was released and urged its institutions not to use the survey. That approach has been effective for the Association, since it is not clear whether any institution is using the survey.
The commission, a fact-finding group that refers complaints to the appropriate governing body, is chaired by presidential appointee Gerald A. Reynolds, assistant general counsel with the Kansas City Power and Light Company. It has no power to change policy. Reynolds, a former OCR employee, also was a member of the Commission on Opportunity in Athletics.
Title IX advocates believe the survey is a flawed instrument because it allows institutions to count as uninterested any surveys that aren’t returned. The NCAA Executive Committee and the NCAA Data Analysis Research Network, a committee of research professionals, also urged NCAA members to avoid the survey because they believe the methodology is inappropriate.
Former NCAA Senior Vice President Judy Sweet spoke at the briefing in support of the NCAA position. She said the 2005 clarification was a stark contrast to earlier policy that required a thorough and complete evaluation of interest by women in sport participation.
“Most university presidents, chancellors and athletics administrators believe the new guidance inappropriately has made it easier to comply with Title IX, and thus not truly comply with the spirit and intent of the law to provide equal opportunity for the under-represented sex,” Sweet said. “The three-part test was intended to provide institutions flexibility in meeting the goals of Title IX, but not to make one prong a means for easier compliance, especially when the results are not consistent with the true spirit of providing equal opportunity.”
Jessica Gavora, vice president of the College Sports Council, also addressed the commission. The College Sports Council is a coalition of national sports organizations that has challenged the application of Title IX. The council has supported the most recent OCR Title IX clarification.
Gavora, however, said while the clarification did allow women to be viewed as “thinking, discerning individuals capable of expressing and acting on their interests when judging an institution under Title IX,” it was flawed because it was based on a regulation that was itself flawed — the premise of accommodating the interests of the under-represented sex, almost always women.
“(The regulation) should be modified from its current requirement that only the interests of the underrepresented sex be accommodated, to a requirement that schools equally accommodate the interests of both sexes,” Gavora said.
Other participants in the briefing included Jocelyn Samuels, vice president for education and employment at the National Women’s Law Center, and Daniel Cohen, senior associate with Rogers & Hardin LLP. Cohen was co-author of a 2006 article in the Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law that analyzed the pros and cons of the survey. Samuels, a Title IX advocate, has participated in the annual NCAA Gender-Equity and Issues Forum.
Donna Lopiano, executive director of the Women’s Sports Foundation, said during a pre-briefing press conference that the meeting, in conjunction with a lawsuit brought in the case of the James Madison University athletics team cuts, was an attempt by the current administration to create “public record of support” for the 2005 clarification and an attempt to weaken Title IX.
“If (Title IX) does get weakened, most of us in the athletics world agree that it will simply give license to put more money into football and men’s basketball,” Lopiano said.
NCAA President Myles Brand, who also participated in the briefing, said the Association “strongly supports” Title IX and urges institutions to disregard the survey proposed by the 2005 clarification.
“Title IX has worked, Title IX continues to work and Title IX still has work to do,” Brand said.
On April 28, the Stanford University Center on Ethics hosted a one-day conference called, “Title IX Today, Title IX Tomorrow.” One day later, the NCAA convened its 17th Gender-Equity and Issues Forum in New Orleans.
Both conferences marked the 35th anniversary of the landmark legislation that forbids gender discrimination under any federally funded educational program. Each conference also featured panel discussions on current challenges surrounding Title IX.
“We were trying to provide an opportunity for people to engage these important speakers who have a lot to say and have tremendous experience in the field,” said Dena Evans, former Stanford women’s cross country coach and the organizer of the Title IX event at Stanford. “We wanted to wash away some of the misconceptions about Title IX and have a place where the issues could be discussed freely.”
Topics at the NCAA’s Gender Equity and Issues Forum included the marketing of women’s sports, fund-raising strategies, Title IX coordinators and sexual-harassment issues. Recently retired University of Texas at Austin women’s basketball coach Jody Conradt also talked about her experiences after 38 seasons as a Division I head coach.
The work and life balance issues facing female coaches also were discussed during a general session in New Orleans. The NCAA Executive Committee has formed a subcommittee to take a closer look at the issues. During his hour-long session at the forum, NCAA President Myles Brand focused on ways to increase the number of female coaches and athletics administrators.
NCAA Senior Woman Administrator Joni Comstock, senior vice president for championships, said the sessions amplify the law’s impact on different constituents.
“Title IX has provided opportunities for women students to participate and receive scholarship funding, resources and coaching in intercollegiate athletics as their male counterparts have for over 100 years,” Comstock said. “During the 35-year history of the law, great progress has been made. However in reviewing men’s and women’s intercollegiate sports programs, women still lag in all categories of support. As an athletics administrator for 25 years on Division I campuses, I understand the challenges we face, but we must avoid blaming Title IX for our financial pressures.”
Effect on men’s sports debated
Discussion of Title IX and its implications characterized the one-day forum on the Palo Alto campus. One of the most intense debates involved former Stanford men’s tennis coach Dick Gould, College Sports Council Executive Director Eric Pearson and Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport Director Mary Jo Kane, who participated in a panel titled “Facts, Fiction and the Future: Men’s Sports and Women’s Opportunities.”
Gould, who spent 38 years at the helm of the Stanford program, suggested that Title IX has harmed men’s tennis.
“The demonstrated participation levels in age-group competition are so substantially more in men’s tennis than women’s tennis. I feel a little bit against the wall when women have almost twice as many opportunities for scholarships as men,” Gould said.
The veteran coach is bothered that women’s programs, despite less interest from youth players, are funded with eight scholarships. Men’s teams are limited to 4.5 grants-in-aid.
“Title IX has been a great thing. I have three daughters who played Division I sports and it was a tremendous opportunity that they wouldn’t have had before Title IX,” Gould said. “But we’re practicing on the same courts as the women, who have more scholarships than starters, and that’s just not fair. I don’t think there’s any way you can justify it. It’s reverse discrimination.”
NCAA President Brand said the Association’s legislative bodies have developed scholarship limits based on total opportunities for men and women. In comments about Title IX for the Double-A Zone, the NCAA’s official blog, NCAA President Brand said football presents the biggest challenge. “There’s nothing equivalent to football on the women’s side,” Brand said. “But athletics departments make decisions about what they want to emphasize and universities make decisions about what they want to spend. Every coach would like to see more scholarships.”
Brand is disturbed by Title IX being blamed for a reduction in opportunities for male student-athletes.
“Title IX has made a radical and positive difference in college athletics. I’m not happy with the fact that some schools have come out and blamed Title IX for the cutting of sports,” he said. “They’ve made a decision about how they want to use their resources and that’s their prerogative. Title IX doesn’t require you to cut men’s sports. The DOE made it clear that cutting men’s sports is a disfavored way to comply with Title IX.”
The challenges of Title IX were addressed by Stanford Athletics Director Bob Bowlsby; University of California, Berkeley, Athletics Director Sandy Barbour; and Women’s Sports Foundation Chief Executive Officer Donna Lopiano in a discussion titled, “Strategies for Equality in a Climate of Commercialism.”
Bowlsby, who also has worked as director of athletics at the University of Iowa, shared his thoughts about increased salaries for football and men’s basketball coaches.
“The high salaries affect a lot of our programs. We derive a substantial amount of our operating capital from football and men’s basketball, but that doesn’t mean they have the prerogative to consume all of the resources,” Bowlsby said. “One needs to take careful consideration of how you deal with the rest of your enterprise.”
Anita DeFrantz, a former rowing Olympian and president of the Amateur Athletic Foundation, had a slightly different perspective than Bowlsby.
“You’ve got to stop spending that kind of money. It strikes me as hilarious that these folks can’t succeed without gigantic salaries,” DeFrantz said. “Most schools don’t clear their expenses. There are people not telling the truth about the cost of their programs and that has to stop.”
DeFrantz acknowledged the positive impact Title IX has had during the past 35 years, but said gender equity has yet to be achieved.
“My career is devoted to equal rights. I grew up in a time and place where I saw unnecessary injustice and I’m very sensitive to that. I know it can be fixed,” DeFrantz said.
Lopiano also commented about the growth of women’s sports as a direct result of Title IX.
“When I was a student-athlete in the 1960s, there were no national championships for women and no athletics scholarships for women,” Lopiano said. “It really is like night and day.”
But despite 35 years of success, Lopiano knows there is room for growth. The improvement is great, she said, but equity has yet to be achieved.
“Women are getting $421 million in athletics scholarships today compared to 35 years ago, when they got $100,000,” Lopiano said. “But the bad news is that they’re still $121 million short of what’s going to male college athletes.”
Representatives at both conferences discussed the Department of Education’s 2005 “Additional Clarification of Intercollegiate Athletics Policy,” which allows schools to distribute e-mail surveys to their student body to determine interest in varsity sports.
Brand sees a significant benefit in assembling administrators on a regular basis to discuss gender-equity issues.
“A lot of people come to learn about the latest developments in Title IX and exchange information,” Brand said of the educational sessions. “The issues haven’t gone away. The Department of Education, for various reasons, is still pushing back on Title IX, despite the fact that when women participate in athletics, they get all the benefits men get.”
Title IX’s 35th anniversary is a time to celebrate but not to rest, Brand said.
“We’ve been making excellent progress, but we’re not there, yet. We still have a lot of work to do,” he said.
Federal panel continues examination of survey use
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, a bipartisan agency of the executive branch appointed by the President and Congress, recently sought information about the March 2005 clarification to Title IX issued by the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.
The briefing, entitled “Title IX Athletics: Accommodating Interest and Abilities,” was conducted May 11 in Washington, D.C.
That clarification changed the application of the third prong of a three-part test used to assess whether institutions are complying with Title IX by allowing a survey to determine interest among students. The OCR provided institutions with a sample of an Internet-based survey. The NCAA denounced the clarification when it was released and urged its institutions not to use the survey. That approach has been effective for the Association, since it is not clear whether any institution is using the survey.
The commission, a fact-finding group that refers complaints to the appropriate governing body, is chaired by presidential appointee Gerald A. Reynolds, assistant general counsel with the Kansas City Power and Light Company. It has no power to change policy. Reynolds, a former OCR employee, also was a member of the Commission on Opportunity in Athletics.
Title IX advocates believe the survey is a flawed instrument because it allows institutions to count as uninterested any surveys that aren’t returned. The NCAA Executive Committee and the NCAA Data Analysis Research Network, a committee of research professionals, also urged NCAA members to avoid the survey because they believe the methodology is inappropriate.
Former NCAA Senior Vice President Judy Sweet spoke at the briefing in support of the NCAA position. She said the 2005 clarification was a stark contrast to earlier policy that required a thorough and complete evaluation of interest by women in sport participation.
“Most university presidents, chancellors and athletics administrators believe the new guidance inappropriately has made it easier to comply with Title IX, and thus not truly comply with the spirit and intent of the law to provide equal opportunity for the under-represented sex,” Sweet said. “The three-part test was intended to provide institutions flexibility in meeting the goals of Title IX, but not to make one prong a means for easier compliance, especially when the results are not consistent with the true spirit of providing equal opportunity.”
Jessica Gavora, vice president of the College Sports Council, also addressed the commission. The College Sports Council is a coalition of national sports organizations that has challenged the application of Title IX. The council has supported the most recent OCR Title IX clarification.
Gavora, however, said while the clarification did allow women to be viewed as “thinking, discerning individuals capable of expressing and acting on their interests when judging an institution under Title IX,” it was flawed because it was based on a regulation that was itself flawed — the premise of accommodating the interests of the under-represented sex, almost always women.
“(The regulation) should be modified from its current requirement that only the interests of the underrepresented sex be accommodated, to a requirement that schools equally accommodate the interests of both sexes,” Gavora said.
Other participants in the briefing included Jocelyn Samuels, vice president for education and employment at the National Women’s Law Center, and Daniel Cohen, senior associate with Rogers & Hardin LLP. Cohen was co-author of a 2006 article in the Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law that analyzed the pros and cons of the survey. Samuels, a Title IX advocate, has participated in the annual NCAA Gender-Equity and Issues Forum.
Donna Lopiano, executive director of the Women’s Sports Foundation, said during a pre-briefing press conference that the meeting, in conjunction with a lawsuit brought in the case of the James Madison University athletics team cuts, was an attempt by the current administration to create “public record of support” for the 2005 clarification and an attempt to weaken Title IX.
“If (Title IX) does get weakened, most of us in the athletics world agree that it will simply give license to put more money into football and men’s basketball,” Lopiano said.
NCAA President Myles Brand, who also participated in the briefing, said the Association “strongly supports” Title IX and urges institutions to disregard the survey proposed by the 2005 clarification.
“Title IX has worked, Title IX continues to work and Title IX still has work to do,” Brand said.
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