For The Right Reasons?

It is easy to simply look at decisions and final outcomes when grading universities' choices to comply with Title IX policies, but that's just the thing, quite often decisions are made only out of compliance and not out of any personal or real beliefs. A perfect example of this is in the case of San Diego State University and some of their recent choices involving female athletic opportunities. On the Title IX Blog: No Sand V-ball in San Diego, it says that SDSU had plans in place to add women's sand volleyball and lacrosse teams in order to decrease the gap in scholarship dollars between male and female athletes. But SDSU has seen its number of enrolled female undergraduates decline in the last few years, therefore the university believes that it can bridge the gap in scholarship dollars by adding only women's lacrosse, completely scrapping the proposed women's sand volleyball team. I think this says a lot about the application of Title IX and its rules to college athletics. Sure, SDSU is adding a women's athletic program and is subsequently giving women more athletic opportunities, but this is being done purely in compliance with scholarship guidelines that have been set in place. I don't mean this to be a personal attack on SDSU, but their choice to add women's lacrosse says nothing about their feelings towards equality between male and female athletics, but much more about their desire to not be reprimanded by the NCAA for not following rules and regulations.

This situation reminded me very specifically of a hypothetical situation in the George F. Will reading, A Train Wreck Called Title IX, in which a school decides they will have 200 athletic opportunities for their students. They have 100 girls that want to play sports and 1,000 boys that also want to play. Due to equity laws, 100 opportunities must be given to both the men and the women. Therefore, one hundred percent of the women are satisfied, while only ten percent of the men can be involved. This example shows how many of the rules are not so much about fairness, but visible equity. Do things look like they are even? Does it seem like all parties are receiving the same opportunities? Sometimes it feels like these are the things that are of concern and not really whether or not all parties are actually satisfied.