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California State
University men's sports are under assault from feminist
organizations who are pursuing a course which both ignores the
desires of female college students and victimizes male college
athletes. This week's casualty was California State University
Northridge's (CSUN) 40 year-old football team.
The attack on male CSU
athletes began in February of 1993, when the California chapter
of the National Organization for Women (Cal-NOW) sued the CSU
system for sex discrimination in athletics under federal Title
IX legislation. The CSUs were forced to sign a consent decree
with Cal-NOW in October of that year, and since then dozens of
men's college teams throughout the state have been eliminated.
The consent decree
mandates that CSU schools achieve "gender equity" by bringing
the percentage of female to male athletes and the percentage of
female to male scholarship funding to within 5% of the
percentage of females to males eligible to participate in
athletics. It also requires that the female portion of the
overall athletic budget be within 10% of the school's
male-female ratio.
On the surface this
seems fair, but it in fact discriminates against male college
athletes in several ways. For one, the consent decree judges
"gender equity" by male-female enrollment ratios instead of
student interest levels. Yet numerous studies demonstrate that
female college students, in general, are less interested in
competitive team athletics than males are, and are more
interested in personal fitness activities (jogging, aerobics,
etc.), than males. Even at all-women's colleges the percentage
of females participating in and expressing an interest in
participating in team sports would not be enough to achieve the
consent decree's gender balance at most co-ed schools.
At the same time, some
female athletic activities, such as drill team and cheerleading,
are not counted as athletics. Thus a male football player and a
female drill team captain both practice with their teams, do
physically demanding training, and perform every weekend, but
only the football player is considered an athlete, and only the
money spent on his activity is considered for gender equity.
In addition, gender
equity calculations unfairly count a sport's athletes,
scholarships, and budget without considering its money-making
ability. While most male sports and almost all female sports are
not profitable, some, such as football and men's basketball,
often bring schools large revenues--revenues which frequently
benefit women's athletic programs but which are completely
invisible in gender equity calculations.
The attempts by CSUN
and other CSU schools to comply with the decree are made even
more difficult by the fact that women have come to dominate the
enrollment on most college campuses, leading 57% to 43%
nationwide and 61% to 39% at CSUN.
Cal-NOW's consent
decree sets the gender equity bar so high that even CSUN, which
has done a tremendous job in building up its female athletic
programs since 1993, has been unable to reach it and is
considered to be out
of compliance. From 1993 to 1998 CSUN tripled its women's
athletic budget and more than tripled its female scholarship
budget, while its male scholarship budget has been reduced. Its
percentage of female athletes to male athletes has risen 50%. It
has added three women's sports and cut four men's teams (though
community activists won a reprieve for the men's sports by
securing outside funding). CSUN's percentage of female athletes
is over 50%, and its women's athletic budget and women's
scholarship funding are just under 50%. All three percentages
will be pushed far higher by the elimination of football.
CSUN's expansion of
women's athletics has gone considerably beyond the interest
levels expressed by its female students in numerous student
surveys. In those surveys women comprise between 35 and 40
percent of those CSUN
students expressing an interest in playing college sports. Even
in the 1992-1993 school year, before the decree was signed, 40%
of CSUN's athletic budget and scholarship funds were spent on
women, and 35% of the school's 428 student-athletes were
women--clearly in line with the interest levels indicated by
student surveys.
Certainly CSUN
football has many woes unrelated to gender equity calculations,
including the lack of a stadium and scant attendance and
revenue. However, the leaders of CSUN seem like the factory
owner who invests little in his plant for 30 years and then
closes it down because it is "outdated" and "unprofitable."
Certainly the decision of former CSUN President Blenda Wilson to
build a new biotechnology center on the site of the football
field without even considering where the team would play in the
future doesn't give the impression that CSUN was committed to
football.
But Cal-NOW shares
responsibility, as do feminist organizations nationwide, who
have used similar tactics which have been largely responsible
for the elimination of 20,000 male athletic positions over the
past decade.
When Title IX was
passed in 1972 to bar sex discrimination in programs receiving
federal funds, it was a huge and laudable gain for the feminist
movement. It was never meant to be a sword wielded to cut down
the dreams and hopes of 19 year-old boys.
This column first appeared
in the
Los Angeles
Daily Journal and the San
Francisco Daily Journal (10/29/01).
Glenn
Sacks' columns on men's and fathers' issues have appeared in dozens of America's
largest newspapers. Glenn can be reached via his website at
www.GlennSacks.com or
via email at Glenn@GlennSacks.com.
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