Women don't participate in sports at the same rate as men. Why then should men be denied the opportunity to compete in order to achieve some sort of "balance" in opportunities for women?

The James Madison University menÂ’s and womenÂ’s cross-country teams had run especially well against an elite field during a competition late last month in eastern Pennsylvania. Afterward, Coach Dave Rinker gathered a giddy, excited group of athletes with tears in his eyes.

RinkerÂ’s runners noticed he was not smiling. In the middle of the meet, back here on the James Madison campus, the university had announced it was eliminating menÂ’s cross country and track, along with eight other, mostly menÂ’s, sports to comply with Title IX, the federal gender-equity law.

“Title IX was created in 1972 to prevent sex discrimination, and it was needed,” Jennifer Chapman, a senior on the women’s cross-country team, which is not being eliminated, said four days later as she led a protest rally of 400 students on campus. “But look what’s happening now. We rode the bus home from Pennsylvania for four hours, 14 guys and 19 girls all crying together. How is that supposed to have been Title IX’s intent?”

* * *

James MadisonÂ’s student body of 17,000 is 61 percent female, and one provision for complying with Title IX instructs institutions to have the percentage of participating athletes match the ratio of men to women on campus. At James Madison, the elimination of seven menÂ’s sports (swimming, cross country, indoor and outdoor track, gymnastics, wrestling and archery) and three womenÂ’s sports (gymnastics, fencing and archery) will boost the proportion of female athletes to 61 percent from about 50 percent.

When the cuts take effect in July, James Madison will be left with 12 womenÂ’s sports and 6 menÂ’s sports, the minimum required to participate in N.C.A.A. Division I competition. Three full-time coaches and eight part-time coaches will lose their jobs, and 144 athletes will be without a varsity team.

Officials conceded that the three womenÂ’s sports eliminated might not be termed exclusively Title IX cuts. Rose said that fencing had struggled with a dwindling roster, that archery was a niche sport that might be better suited as a club team, and that gymnastics was not a conference sport and had few nearby rivals for competition.

Title IX is a good idea gone horribly wrong. The interest is there for the eliminated men's sports. The eliminated women's sports were struggling programs with limited interest. But because it has become a results-oriented game rather than an issue of providing the opportunity to participate in sports, men are consistently denied the chance to participate in activities in which they are interested and which women are not. Shouldn't the real measure not be matching the percentage of students enrolled, but rather the percentages of students interested in participating in sports?

Maybe we can start applying that logic to academic programs. We'll cap enrollments based upon sex, and eliminate programs that are so seriously out of balance that they are unredeemable. I suspect that we will then see a drop in the number of Women's Studies programs around the country.

Posted by: Greg at 02:02 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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