Does Georgia State Have Sand In Its Eyes?

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Georgia State will add women's sand volleyball for the 2013 spring season. Predictably, the school's athletic director, Cheryl Levick, cited Title IX compliance — specifically to balance gender proportionality numbers with football — as the key reason. The addition of this sport brings with it an estimated $1.5 million price tag for start-up costs.

There are a few things to keep in mind when talking about women's sand volleyball, which the NCAA deemed last year an emerging sport:

• So far, only fifteen teams nationwide play sand volleyball, according to the American Volleyball Coaches Association.

• Only a handful of southern colleges, such as Florida Atlantic and Tulane, host sand volleyball teams.

• The Colonial Athletic Association, which Georgia State belongs to, hosts exactly zero other colleges that play sand volleyball.

Given the issue of cost and relatively low interest in the sport around the region, is it really fair to ask the school to foot a $1.5 million bill simply to comply with a law built around arbitrary gender quotas?

Correcting Common Title IX Fallacies

Yesterday we tuned into the National Women’s Law Center’s (NWLC) webinar, “Rally for Girls’ Sports: A Guide To Title IX for Parents, Coaches, and School Officials.” Unfortunately for those of us tuning in, we heard the same incorrect statements on how Title IX is currently applied to high school and college sports.

Two of the major themes that were discussed included:

*There is nothing in Title IX that requires or encourages cutting opportunities.

*Booster clubs, despite the fact that outside, private and volunteer funds provide amenities for the teams they support, must provide equal benefits and services across the board — no exception.

Here's our response:

*Many nations across the country have had to cut popular, successful men’s teams in order to comply with Title IX:

We could spend several pages pointing to examples of this. But for the sake of brevity here are just a few of the numerous examples.

• In 2007, James Madison University famously cut seven men’s teams and three women’s teams. At the time, David Bourne, JMU’s athletics director, bluntly attributed cuts to Title IX, and not to attempt to save money. He said, “If this was solely for financial purposes, we would not have done it.”

• Rutgers University is another classic example. In 2006, it cut five men’s teams and one women’s team to properly adhere to Title IX. These programs, as it so happens, had historically proven to be a fertile producer of Olympic athletes and Academic All-Americas. Again, at the time, Rutgers athletic director Robert E. Mulcahy said the painful cuts were made to bring athletic participation numbers along gender lines closer to the proportionality of males and females in the student population. The hard truth, he said, was abiding by Title IX’s strict gender quotas “means almost all the cuts have to be in men’s programs.”

• And, at the University of Delware, the athletics department changed men’s cross country and outdoor track from varsity to club status. Why? According to the University website, “no realistic alternative was identified. With a roster of 38 male student athletes, these two men’s sports programs must be considered when evaluating the University’s capacity for continued Title IX compliance.”

*Gender quota champions like the NWLC fail to recognize that forced pooling of funds from booster clubs and mandating the school “figure out” how to match booster club funds to ensure equality simply doesn’t work with economic reality. What it really means is parents are now expected to pay not just for their own kids after-school activities, but the extracurricular activities of all students. Many parents might not be willing or able to meet that mandate, and as a result private donations across the board go down harming children of both genders.

Title IX was originally intended to prevent gender based discrimination, not to create an unfair playing field for one side or the other. It's time to return to the original spirit of the law.

Update: More Thoughts on Booster Clubs in New Mexico

In our last post, we clipped an editorial by Ned Cantwell, who correctly made the point that if gender quotas were applied to booster clubs, you would say goodbye to bake sales, carwashes and other fundraisers for your child’s sports teams. After receiving criticism for his column, Ned fired back. The following snippet clarifies not only what he said but also addresses Martha Burk’s incorrect statements on the proposed law:

Here’s what I said. The law will prevent booster clubs, say, the girl soccer team, from holding a car wash to fund its annual banquet. Instead, the column suggested, there would be one super dooper booster club to equally distribute money donated or raised privately.

Not true. The School Athletics Equity Act stipulates everything connected to high school athletics, private donations and public funding, will be reported to the state. Therefore, the proceeds of the car wash will be recorded along with the $10,000 gift from the rich guy to whatever team his kid plays on. We will also record the number of coaches each team has and how much each is paid, as well as a lot of other time-consuming data gathering.

The New Mexico School Athletics Equity Act has no enforcement power. It simply exists so that “sunshine” and “transparency” will brighten the high school athletic scene.

The purpose of the law is to make sure districts include private funding when abiding by the federal Title IX Act to make sure boys sports and girls sports are treated equally. Any substantial donation to any team will then give the school district a major headache. As Burk told me on the telephone, and wrote in the Albuquerque Journal:

“…In plain English, this means that if booster clubs provide lavish meals, equipment, and other benefits to boys (or girls) teams, the district must ensure that equivalent benefits accrue to opposite sex teams. How that is accomplished is up to the district….”

That last line is the killer. In fact, the law will discourage private donations and involvement by parents and supporters. How is a cash-strapped district supposed to counter a $10,000 gift from a deep pocketed donor to either a boy or girl team and make sure the others are equally compensated? The unfortunate answer is they probably couldn't and would have to turn down the donation to stay within compliance of Title IX.

Title IX Booster Club Issue Raises Ire in New Mexico

For years now, we've been warning our readers about how gender quota supporters want to extend their control to high school booster clubs. While some schools are simply being targeted for costly federal investigations, for schools in New Mexico, it's already the law. Here's a passage from a story that ran earlier this week at PNTOnline.com:

[W]hat the New Mexico School Athletic Equity Act basically says is your daughter and her softball teammates can’t stand on Main Drag some Saturday morning with signs inviting neighbors into the vacant bank parking lot for a $5 car wash, proceeds earmarked for the team banquet.

It means parents of the soccer boys can’t get together to throw a huge yard sale, proceeds earmarked for purchasing warmup jackets for their kids.

Legend has it that many years ago a prominent Alamogordo attorney was told the golf team on which two of his boys played needed a van to get to tournaments. “What color do you want?” he said. Now every team gets a van?

Listen, fellow New Mexicans. We no longer will permit such individual displays of team pride, of spirited youth energy, of parental generosity to the programs in which their kids participate. Instead, each high school will have one Super Dooper All Inclusive Booster Club to take care of all boys and girls sports.

The law interpretation is that if one team with spirit and enthusiasm works to buy warmup jackets, then the school district must provide warmup jackets to other teams.

The Albuquerque Journal quotes Dorene Kuffer, legal director at the Southwest Women’s Law Center. “I know there are some schools in this state where the football banquet is at Tamaya (Resort) and the volleyball banquet is in someone’s backyard, and that’s just not fair.”

Sorry, Ms. Kuffer. If sponsored with private money, it’s fair.

Here's hoping the word gets out to more people and places.

ASC President Leo Kocher on Title IX Quotas

In today's edition of the Daily Trojan, American Sports Council President Leo Kocher was asked what was preventing the University of South California from adding new men's sports to their athletic department:

In response to the university’s recent addition of two women’s sports, some have expressed discontent with the constraints placed upon the program by Title IX.

“It’s certainly unfair and it’s because [universities] decide to let a quota law dictate athletic policy,” said Leo Kocher, president of the American Sports Council, an organization exploring Title IX reform. “These kind of twisted decisions are all the result of trying to comply with the enormous pressure these types of laws exert on athletic programs.”