Bush has total control over the fate of Title IX. He appointed a committee of 15 to study the effects of Title IX and make recommendations to amend the program. The committee will then send their recommendations to the Secretary of Education, Roderick Paige, and if he approves it, Bush will sign it into law. Bush does not need Congressional approval to change the law, which makes the issue all the more urgent.
Title IX, which was passed in 1972, is the common name for the education act that allows women equal access to all educational facilities, but is better known for giving women opportunities to compete in athletics. Under the current regulations, the athletic scholarships available for women must be roughly equivalent to the ratio of men and women enrolled in the college.
The committee's proposals would allow colleges and universities to be in compliance with Title IX if only 43 percent of athletic scholarships are available to women, even though women make up 55 percent of the undergraduate population. Additionally, colleges would be required to survey women students periodically to determine their level of interest in playing sports. The required level of scholarships would then be made to correspond with the survey results.
Both of these proposals would severely weaken Title IX and are completely unnecessary. Since its inception 30 years ago, not one college or university has been held responsible for its failure to comply with the law. Thus, Bush is attempting to change a law that has not punished anyone. Additionally, the survey proposal is simply inane. Essentially, the proposal is saying that women must prove their interest in sports. This presumption stems from the stereotype that women are not interested in sports. By looking at available statistics it is obvious that women are interested in sports. Many girls play varsity sports for their high schools and attend summer camps to improve their skills. There are also many competitive athletic leagues for girls besides outside of high school. For example, in basketball, there are Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) leagues for boys and girls. Moreover, women's participation rate in sports has been steadily increasing in the past 30 years. Last year, the University of Virginia hired a coach to start recruiting players for a women's golf team at the college. In an article written last year by The Washington Post, the coach was shocked to find her desk flooded with applications from prospective and current students at the university.
Critics of Title IX argue that smalltime men's sports such as wrestling and gymnastics are being displaced in order to make room for women's athletics. However, this is a bogus argument. The real reason these sports are being eliminated is due to the expense of big-time men's athletics such as football and basketball.
In "How Football Can Crush a College," one of the best articles I read during winter break, the author argued that while football serves as a source of revenue for colleges through alumni donations and tickets to the games, the expenses associated with building a big-time college program creates a huge drain on the funds of the athletic department. For most colleges, football is a losing proposition because the cost of maintaining a football program is greater than the revenue it creates. Even if a college manages to break even in their accounting books, it is still probably losing money because it fails to include some expenses in the ledger that are associated with football such as state-of-the-art weight training rooms and academic tutors.
Additionally, there are about 100 scholarships available for football teams, even though many of those players will never enter the games. Since football is such a dangerous sport where many athletes get injured, it is reasonable to have scholarships for backups and reserves. However, it is unnecessary to have enough players for four full football teams. For example, a team could get rid of some scholarships at positions where one player could cover two positions such as right and left guard. Just by eliminating a few of these scholarships, there would be enough scholarships to support additional men's teams. The committee that Bush appointed would of course never consider these recommendations for pacifying the men's teams because 10 out of the 15 members of the committee (a two-thirds majority) come from schools where football is highly valued.
While Title IX has perpetrated no harm, it has done a great deal of good. Before Title IX, women were denied the opportunity to participate in all sports, except for cheerleading (which I personally don't consider a real sport). Now, over eight million women have played sports at least at the high school level. The expanded opportunities for women have spawned a professional women's basketball league and soccer league. Moreover, countless studies have shown that women who participate in sports have more self-confidence and are less likely to get pregnant as a teenager, use drugs or drop out of school. Tampering with this wonderful program would only serve to screw up the opportunities for women and would be a huge step backwards in the fight for equality of the sexes.