Commissioners consider moderate changes to Title IX
By Joseph White
Associated Press

WASHINGTON — A divided Bush administration commission considering changes to Title IX debated procedural issues and approved several modest recommendations Wednesday, setting the stage for a combative finish as the most controversial ideas are presented Thursday.

In a key development, commissioners who favor maintaining the law’s current standards won the right to have dissenting views included in the final report that will be sent to Education Secretary Rod Paige next month.

“There’s tremendous passion on this issue,” said commissioner Julie Foudy, a member of the U.S. women’s national soccer team. “To not represent both sides of the passion is a disservice of what we’re going to give to the secretary.”

The Commission on Opportunity in Athletics began discussing 24 recommendations, but the 15-member panel spent the first hour of the two-day meeting debating its own rules.

Foudy and Donna de Varona expect a majority of the panel to vote to scale back standards in the 31-year-old Title IX gender equity law that has exponentially increased participation in women’s sports. They were upset the initial procedures did not call for minority views to be included in the report, a rule Foudy called a “gag order.”

“I don’t think anybody’s gagged you,” countered co-chairman Ted Leland, athletic director at Stanford.

After lengthy debate, the commissioners agreed their final report will include both viewpoints on any recommendation not reached by consensus or majority vote.

Title IX prohibits gender discrimination in programs that receive federal funding. Its effect has been profound: The number of women participating in high school sports rose from 294,000 to 2.8 million from 1971-2002. The number of women in college sports increased fivefold over a similar timeframe.

Most of the approved recommendations dealt with technical issues in the complex law, and there was no problem reaching a consensus on at least one topic: The Education Department must do a better job explaining Title IX guidelines to colleges and high schools.

“That’s why it’s so confusing to the public,” said De Varona, a two-time Olympic swimming champion. “How do you understand it? That’s why it’s been so easy to position the arguments.”

The commissioners also urged schools to stop overspending on sports such as football and men’s basketball, whose budgets are cited as limiting opportunities in minor sports for both men and woman. Under Title IX, however, schools cannot be told how to spend their athletics money — only that they do it in a nondiscriminatory way.

Critics say the law has, in effect, punished male athletes to provide more opportunities for women. Roughly 400 men’s college teams were eliminated in the 1990s, with wrestling taking such a blow that the National Wrestling Coaches Association has filed suit.

Among the recommendations set for a vote Thursday, the most controversial would change the Title IX plank that says a school can comply with the law by having a male-female athlete ratio that is “substantially proportionate” to its male-female enrollment.

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