At home are medals and plaques from my years of high school wrestling in Sparta. Today, our wrestling team is putting out sweat, blood and tears as it takes a 13-1 record into the tournament season. And my wrestling website, which tracks the team, awaits removal of links to the Marquette and UW-River Falls wrestling websites, because those teams no longer exist.
I also envision those medals and plaques, my headgear and shoes, and those of the team burning in my fireplace at home. When the fire is dead and gone, so too will be the shoes and medals and everything else.
These teams have been cut, along with 437 other wrestling programs slashed since 1972, the year Title IX was passed. When it was drafted, Title IX had righteous motives. The law forced educational institutions receiving federal funding to stop discrimination on the basis of sex. No longer would women be overlooked on the playing field and restricted in the classroom. Title IX was the spark to a process that would likely have occurred regardless, albeit more slowly.
Today, the law stands best as a relic of a bygone era. Having outlived its usefulness, Title IX has turned sour.
The problem isn’t with Title IX itself. It lies within a 1979 policy interpretation wherein in order to comply with Title IX, a school must show that intercollegiate athletic opportunities for male and female students are provided in numbers proportionate to their respective enrollments. That is, in a school where the student body is 50 percent men and 50 percent women, then the varsity athletic participation must also be 50 percent men and 50 percent women. This creates a gender quota, which, by law, is illegal. Take this and apply it to the classroom. Imagine what might happen to male-dominated engineering courses or women’s studies programs.
The original intent of the law was to add women’s sports, not cut men’s sports. Unfortunately, a number of schools have decided to comply by eliminating a few male sports to bring roster numbers into alignment. Marquette in Milwaukee is one such example. The wrestling program was completely funded through alumni donations, yet the university eliminated the team to meet standards of “gender equity.” How have women benefited from the loss of Marquette’s wrestling team?
Males and females have different levels of interest in sports. Look at the intramural squads at any university. I guarantee you there will be more men than women, and this is based completely on interest.
When I came to UW in the fall of 2001, members of the men’s crew team approached me and asked me to join, saying I didn’t need any prior rowing experience. I don’t understand how a wrestler who has spent his entire life training can be denied a spot so that someone who may have never played a sport can join a team that doesn’t require prior experience.
The easy solution is to completely scrap Title IX’s provisions altogether. After 30 years of Title IX, the NCAA reports that 151,916 women participate in sports, whereas 208,966 men participate. If Title IX continues on its present course, as many as 60,000 male athletic opportunities could be lost. Some use this statistic as evidence that a gap still exists. Those same people can’t explain why women, who have more NCAA sports to choose from, can’t muster up the interest to match men’s.
Universities must also look at the sports individually. Football and basketball bring in the most money, but they also require the most funding, making it harder for smaller sports like gymnastics, swimming and wrestling to survive. At UW, football and basketball combined for nearly two-thirds of the entire athletic budget during the 2000-01 school year. Title IX’s current interpretation has found some schools rejecting students who want to walk on in order to keep roster spots down. With this, athletes like Jim Leohnard may have never been given the chance to suit up.
Title IX is the primary reason why women’s sports exist in the magnitude that they do today, and we should be thankful for that. Regrettably, a series of flawed interpretations have dirtied what remains one of the greatest achievements of the civil-rights movement. How could anyone argue with this: “No person in the [United States] shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, or denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving federal aid.”
A federal advisory commission recently voted not to change the proportionality clause of the Title IX interpretation. Until another commission challenges the proportionality clause, both men and women will continue to lose opportunities at the hands of a law that was meant to do just the opposite.
Derek Montgomery ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in journalism.
