Andrew DeLaney: Current Title IX not a perfect X

President George W. Bush, after much sound and fury over possible reform of Title IX during the first two and a half years of his administration, took the easy way out earlier this month by deciding to do something that generated little news -- nothing.

There will almost certainly be no large changes in the way Title IX is enforced during President Bush's tenure following Assistant Secretary of Civil Rights Gerald Reynolds's letter of clarification, dated July 11, stating that the administration's position is largely that of the status quo. Given that Bush is a socially conservative president, no changes should be expected on the horizon.

Sorry to any male walk-on, not enough roster spots. Tough luck if you happen to have a Y-chromosome and wish to continue to wrestle, swim or participate in gymnastics. These sports -- particularly wrestling as, it has a fairly large roster, no female equivalent and rarely makes enough money to justify these two strikes -- have been cut in high numbers across the nation. These sports have been cut and have seen their rosters limited because the athletes are male and the schools need to pass Title IX's three-part test.

In 1979, due to confusion over enforcement and compliance of the law, schools were informed they had to obey one of the following tests. The first part of the "three-prong" test is that the gender ratio of athletes must be akin to the gender ratio of the student body at large. The second prong is that a school must demonstrate it has a history of expanding efforts to help the underrepresented gender. The third is that the underrepresented gender's interests are fully accounted for with the existing programs. These tests were largely reaffirmed in letters of clarification in both 1996 and, unfortunately, in 2003.

It is unfortunate because most schools are presented with an easy way out that -- and here's the dirty little secret of Title IX's three-prong test -- helps neither men nor women.

If you need to get the numbers equal between men and women why bother creating a female sport to add 10 spots -- and spend the requisite money on coaches, travel, etc. -- when you could simply cut the male sport. That balances the number and even saves enough on a non-revenue sport to give everyone in the office a bigger holiday bonus.

Can you think of a reason not to do this? Neither can most athletic departments under the current rules, hence the male sports consistently hit the chopping block.

Mind you Title IX is a worthwhile program that should not be scrapped by any means.

Women's athletics were put on the back burner for years due to what we can only be called blatant sexism. Without this law women's athletics would not be as prominent as they are, and the prominence of female intercollegiate athletics is a good thing.

However, does anyone really think that the cutting of male sports somehow helps advance female athletics? And does anyone doubt that the cutting results from the proportionality test? Despite Reynolds's statement that "elimination of teams is a disfavored practice" it is still the easiest option to comply.

And as such it will still occur.

In the past ten years both Democratic and Republican administrations have opted to quietly maintain a flawed system instead of seeking new solutions.

A renewed emphasis on the third prong, which quite reasonably states schools are in compliance if the interests of an underrepresented genders is met, would seem to be a fair solution. While new issues, specifically how to gauge interest, would arise, almost anything seems better than the system currently in place for the foreseeable future. Of course, almost anything does not include a return to a time when only men participated on the playing field.

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