The federal commission charged with studying changes in the enforcement of Title IX may speak with one document, but not necessarily with one voice.
As the group’s final meeting got under way Wednesday, U.S. soccer star and commission member Julie Foudy accused commission co-chairman Ted Leland–the athletic director of her alma mater, Stanford–of stifling dissent by refusing to allow a minority opinion to be submitted with the rest of the commission recommendations.
“I have a problem with that,” said Foudy, president of the Women’s Sports Foundation. “It’s putting a gag order on anyone who doesn’t agree.”
Her position was supported by fellow commission member Donna de Varona, a broadcaster and Olympic swimming gold medalist.
Leland called Foudy’s comments “inappropriate and unfair.”
“I don’t think anyone gagged anybody,” he said.
Dissenting opinions will be included in the report, Leland said after the meeting, although it was unclear in what form.
Not all of the discussion among the members of the Commission on Opportunity in Athletics was that contentious as they prepared their final recommendations for Education Secretary Rod Paige.
The commission was formed to review Title IX, the 31-year-old mandate prohibiting sex discrimination in schools that receive federal funds. It is credited with greatly expanding women’s sports opportunities.
After hearing testimony at “town meetings” around the country and studying reams of often conflicting statistical evidence, commission members remain divided in philosophy and objectives.
Much of the day was devoted to semantics and relative minutiae that are stalking horses for bigger issues. At one point Leland joked he had been told the proceedings were “worse than a faculty meeting.”
There was lively debate over how to determine interest in varsity athletics among women; whether male athletes are adversely affected by Title IX; and whether to count walk-ons on men’s teams in a school’s total “athletic opportunities.”
Northern Illinois University athletic director Cary Groth said walk-ons should count, and favors limiting them so resources can be distributed more evenly between men and women.
“The reality is a walk-on still costs money,” Groth said. “You still get the same benefits, with the exception of a scholarship.”
The 15-member commission approved about half of the 24 recommendations in its draft report–many of them general policy statements–and is slated to deal with some of the meatier issues Thursday.
“It should be passionate,” de Varona said.
The commission could and probably will submit contradictory resolutions to Paige.
“Our job is to present him with options and ideas,” Leland said. “When we started, there was concern about where this thing was going, conspiracy theorists, people who said the purpose of this is to back off Title IX. I think you’ve seen that’s not so.”
Wednesday, however, Foudy and de Varona asserted that the commission’s proposed recommendations need stronger wording and did not adequately reflect continued inequities, especially at the college level.
Others, including conservative educator Rita Simon, Brigham Young University general counsel Tom Griffith and University of Maryland athletic director Deborah Yow argued that Title IX interpretation has relied too heavily on the proportionality standard.
That standard dictates that an institution’s athletic opportunities mirror male and female undergraduate enrollment percentages. Although it’s only one of three ways to prove compliance with the law, many schools have adhered to it as the only sure way to avoid legal challenges.
“You can’t single out one endeavor on a campus,” Yow said during a break in the meeting, arguing that quotas never would be considered for engineering majors, for example.
The commission agreed to discourage the practice of cutting men’s teams to comply with Title IX.
“That’s really where the rubber hits the road,” Iowa athletic director Bob Bowlsby said. “It’s going to diminish the number of times an institution hangs a financial decision on the back of Title IX.”
Although the final report will contain some language implicitly urging institutions to curb spending in major men’s programs, it appears it will not address the issue head-on.
Many women’s sports advocates have said they believe the reluctance of college administrators to trim bloated football and men’s basketball programs makes it harder to offer equal resources to women and “minor” men’s sports.
