|
Take UCLA in the '90s. When I started grad school there it was in compliance.
Then it was determined that progres wasn't enough, it was the *wrong* test. Money equality mattered.
So they added scholarships for women's teams. Coaches. Other perks. Travel funds. If you joined a women's team it was easier to get a scholarship than for almost any man's team except the big 3--baseball, basketball, football. A man's team might have a part-time coach; the corresponding woman's team would have a full-time coach and a trainer.
Then it was determined that money wasn't enough. It was the wrong test. The right test was warm bodies. That full-time coach and trainer didn't count.
Men's teams had to be cut. Low profile ones like gymnastics and swimming, which had a fairly good record of training Olympic gold medal winners.
The university tried to argue that there was simply less demand for sports by women. Still, they went out and recruiting as many female students as possible so that they could keep some of the men's teams.
Esp. the intramural teams, the ones that by definition don't get scholarships but which constituted the Title IX enforcers' new focus, didn't make the cut. I was at a dorm meeting where the administration sent somebody to pitch women's intramural sports. The women's teams would have several try-outs, they'd get uniforms, several prime training room time slots, they'd get prime-time access to the best IM fields, they'd have things like water aand sports drinks provided, a part-time paid coach, etc., etc. The try-outs were advertised prominently in the paper, posted around campus, in the dorms.
The men's team wasn't advertised. To get information from the reps visiting student groups you had to ask. Little was posted around campus, and that was at the last minute. The newspaper ad was 1" of column space. Their try-outs were 7:30 in the morning, Friday IIRC. Each sport had one try-out time. Their practice times were at some goofy hour--10 a.m. Their shower hours were goofy, they had left over training room times. They had to buy their uniforms and if they wanted water, there was a public water fountain not 200 feet away on Bruin Walk. They had to find volunteer coaches. There was *nothing* to encourage the men's teams and they got no perks.
The women's teams, after all that, after multiple try-out times, were often short. If you wanted on the team and didn't drool on yourself too much, you got a berth. The men's teams had waiting lists, and people like me--I don't drool, but certainly am not athletically gifted--had no chance of getting on them. Surveys had predicted this before the fact; surveys validated this after the fact. It was funny: The men in the dorm I was in kept pestering the women to go and try out for IM teams. "Join the team and then quit if you want to." Just get warm bodies on the roster for the Title IX audit.
Title IX folks? Nope. There had to be parity in warm bodies *and* in money, *and* you had to show continued progress. You couldn't choose which one works. They could choose, and whichever one you ran afoul of was the most important one that day. Some of the men's IM teams had to be cut because of the women's non-participation.
The latest wrinkle in some schools is allowing men to fill out the women's teams rosters, for bookkeeping purposes. The Title IX folk don't like that. It plays havoc with what, charitably, could be called a quota. Title IX went from helping women to being so suspicious that college administrators were misogynistic nazis that any hint women weren't getting what men were getting had to be dealt with a prima facie of extreme guilt that justified punishing men.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
