30 years for Title IX doesn't mean equality

Picture this: You are a female athlete who wants to use the school weight room, but you can't because to get to the weight room, you'd have to go through the men's locker room. No girls allowed.

Picture this: You are a head women's varsity collegiate track coach. You make less than your male counterpart because he has coached at X University longer. It doesn't matter that you coached twice that time at the high school or club level when higher education athletics. didn't even offer your sport. To have tenure you would have had to coach when there were no girls were allowed.

Picture this: It's been over two decades since the United States Federal Government passed a law called Title IX, making it illegal for educational institutions to discriminate in athletics based on gender. Your school is in direct violation of federal mandate and doesn't do anything to correct the situation until threatened with a lawsuit by its own employees. Two decades and still, no girls allowed.

Now picture this: Penn prior to 1994. The school is your school and these pictures were a reality. This is no backyard fort your brother said you couldn't enter. This is the University of Pennsylvania, the Ivy League.

This is Brown University the year women's gymnastics took the school to district and then appeals court until Brown finally relented and agreed to support female athletics in compliance with federal standards.

This is virtually every state school pre-1972 Title IX and in many cases, post. And now men are complaining.

It's January 2001 and the National Wrestling Coaches Federation has filed a lawsuit against the federal government because Title IX is discriminatory -- towards male athletes. Under Title IX hundreds of men's sports programs have been cut nationally, particularly sports like wrestling, swimming, and track and field.

The NWCA holds that the massive cuts are directly due to a clause in Title IX requiring men and women to have equal athletic opportunities despite a lack of participation in sports by females. They, and many schools across the nation, hope that the law will be amended and equity satisfied based solely on demand. This brings into play the argument that men are naturally more inclined toward sports, creating the larger demand.

An article in last week's Newsweek concluded that young men have "distinctive needs for hierarchy and organized team activities" while for women to pursue such activities is an indicator that "feminists seem to think young girls aren't worthy of respect and admiration unless and until they act like young boys."

Penn woman's rowing coach Barb Kirch, however, wants to know what makes athletics necessarily a male endeavor. She views sports as an opportunity to build self-esteem and one that should be available to each gender. Radically enough, she views everyone as an individual, and athletic inclination independent of sex.

And Penn's men's track and field coach Charlie Powell doesn't believe that the argument holds any water either. Powell also contends that cutting men's teams is only the easiest and shortsighted solution to providing equity, especially at the state level where the problem occurs most often. He makes an example of Penn.

Powell was here when in '94 female coaches lodged complaints against the University for non-compliance to Title IX because of inequitable funding and opportunities. "It was very apparent that certain things weren't compliant and it wasn't just athletics -- it was a lot of things," he said. He views the situation as embarrassing not just at Penn, but on the national level.

And just as Penn, who according to Powell, receives a pittance compared to some of the money that flows through state athletic departments, found a way to comply -- building a new coaching center, reevaluating coaching salaries, funding, and elevating several female sports at the expense of only three men's -- other schools can too. But while Penn may have come a long way, it has not come far enough.

Last semester US News & World Report published a "sports honor roll" of top college athletic departments. Penn didn't make the cut. The reason? According to USN≀ it was the University's negative 8.4 difference in the percentage of female athletes compared to females in the student body. Brown however, made the list, having eventually emerged from court with an agreement that its percentage difference be no more than a negative 3.5.

Powell doesn't think this is a problem though, since Title IX only requires that opportunities be made, not interest generated. So there are opportunities, just not enough takers.

Does this mean that because fewer women play sports, fewer teams ought to be available to them? Penn varsity basketball player and Wharton senior David Klatsky thinks so.

But a Penn varsity women's rower begs to differ. She thinks that, with time, stronger women's teams will be established and the interest gaps will be filled.

But even as the thirtieth anniversary of Title IX approaches, we'll have to just wait and see. Then again, to do that girls have to be allowed.

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