<p>LOL! Y'all are great - between the mud-wrestling and the bake sale, I love it! ;)</p>
<p>Perhaps the women could combine the two of them (heavens knows why women have to do this and not men, although I suspect that no one wants to see men writhe about and eat brownies that bear a strange resemblance to carbeurator fluid) and have a mud-wrestling bake sale.</p>
<p>ARIES - LOL I have to agree with you ROFL.</p>
<p>And I think the teams need to be re-arranged - the gals will play football and the guys will be on the synchronized swim team..........the guys can bake the brownies and the gals will mud wrestle.......... fair is fair.</p>
<p>We DO live in an equal rights society here..............................so the guys have had to give up something so the gals can participate - gee whiz.</p>
<p>Sure it is sad when things change - like some mens sports that have to be elimitated - so women can participate - but.. we are in modern times here - and I agree that Title IX did complicate the mix.</p>
<p>barrons:</p>
<p>Alumni who played sports or enjoyed watching sports donate to their colleges and often donate for sports. This is why in Harvard's last fund-raising campaign, the first items on its wish list to get fully funded were coaches' endowed positions. And this is why so many universities tout the benefits of sports in alumni relations. </p>
<p>Since women have not been playing sports for as long as men and also have not been in positions of wealth as long as men, they--as a group--have less money to give and are less likely to give to sports. Again, in Harvard's fund-raising campaign, the classes that donated the most were from the 1950s and 1960s.
So, until the post Title IX generation comes into its own (and I don't mean graduates from college), female athletics will not be able to depend on the generosity of alumnae.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The fact is, every college has a limited budget to fund sports. The issue is, and has always been, how to divide that limited budget "pie" into reasonable slices.
[/quote]
Right. And what I keep reading is that football, because of it's large numbers of participants, eats up so much of the men's half of the pie that there isn't enough left for wrestling, volleyball, etc. but we keep football because it's popular with fans/alumni and often (though not always) profitable. And we let wrestling go because it's not. So we need to stop pretending that this is about education and the development of individuals and admit that it's about money.</p>
<p>"Since women have not been playing sports for as long as men and also have not been in positions of wealth as long as men, they--as a group--have less money to give and are less likely to give to sports."</p>
<p>It's a good argument as to why (leaving the sports part out) colleges shouldn't admit Black folks. And sure enough, just when, for the first time in history, legacy admissions could actually make a difference for Black folks, prestige colleges are de-emphasizing them.</p>
<p>Hmmmm.</p>
<p>"So we need to stop pretending that this is about education and the development of individuals and admit that it's about money."</p>
<p>It's about money. ;)</p>
<p>
[quote]
It's about money.
[/quote]
LOL. Exactly. And whenever something is about money, there will be lots of bickering and squabbling and sometimes out-and-out war, and there will always be winners and losers, and sports will generate a great deal of attention and energy in this direction because by its very nature, it attracts people with an affinity for competition. Unlike people who lament the loss of, say, the ceramics program at State U.</p>
<p>Well - I guess we need to send our kids to schools without football teams that bring in all that $$.</p>
<p>tsdad, How the law is written and how it is interpreted and enforced are two different things. Administrators take the path of least resistence & cut men's programs. Even those that had alumni pledge 100% funding. It's the PC world we live in.</p>
<p>Opie: I went to a chauvanistic Catholic h.s. in the 1970s. Our school had oaver 400 girls and only 15 spots on the varsity basketball team. That was it for sports opportunities. Boys had football, track, cross country, baseball, basketball, and soccer. In junior year, some college kids volunteered to start and coach a girl's track team. About 150 of us eagerly joined. We chose to fund it with spaghetti dinners, rather than bake sales. (Not a penny came from the school.) We were often not allowed to use the boy's high jump pits or hurdles or the weight room. So I know all about disparity in boys & girls sports opportunities. My town had not a single girl's organized sport either.</p>
<p>Needless to say, I realize the need to bring girl's opportunities on par with boys. I lived it. But I think Title IX has been hijacked by a truly radical element that refuses to accept gender differences.</p>
<p>It is a much more equal world that we now live in for college athletes - M vs F - sorry to say tho - it took Title IX to force that issue.</p>
<p>Mini:</p>
<p>The legacy edge would still continue to advantage whites for a very long time to come. Some time ago, the Crimson ran an article about the women's soccer captain. She is a 13th generation Harvard legacy. Quite a trifecta.</p>
<p>Marite, I think that is fairly reasoned but it seems there have to be some wealthy women out there (as they control most of the wealth in the US as I understand it) who would be interested even if they did not play the sport. My school has done a decent job with women's sports and I am proud of their record but even the softball field was funded by two brothers.(they were in the diamond business so maybe it was the great wordplay). It was just something that I noticed over the years and my sample is pretty much one school.</p>
<p>"The legacy edge would still continue to advantage whites for a very long time to come. Some time ago, the Crimson ran an article about the women's soccer captain. She is a 13th generation Harvard legacy. Quite a trifecta."</p>
<p>'Tis true, but it is "interesting" that the de-emphasis would come with the very first significant generation of non-white legacies.</p>
<p>Stickershock:</p>
<p>I enforced Title IX for the Office for Civil Rights. I investigated Title IX athletics complaints at between 20-25 high schools, community colleges and universities. The Government does not force colleges to cut men's sports. We did everything we could to prevent that from happening. A GAO study conducted 5 or so years ago found that nearly 66% of colleges came into compliance with part 3 of the three-part test. Part 3 says that a college will be in compliance with the interest and abilities portion if:</p>
<p>"the present program accommodates the interests and abilities of the underrepresented sex." This was traditionally proved through student surveys. Moreover, even if the underrepresented sex showed interest in a sport it didn't have to be offered if there was no likelihood of competition in the college's normal competitive area, and if there was a lack of ability among the current students.</p>
<p>This is not a hard standard to meet, and the current administration has made it so easy that most colleges are choosing to ignore it and stick with the standard that was in use from 1979.</p>
<p>You will not understand Title IX by reading the NY Times or the Washington Post, for that matter. Both of them have for years shown a complete misunderstanding of the law and how it is enforced. Between the lazy newspaper reporters and the anti-feminists, those of us who did the job felt we were going crazy. We'd read these ludicrous articles and see what we were doing, and felt totally powerless. Reason number 356 why I retired from the Feds.</p>
<p>Barrons:</p>
<p>How do women control most of the wealth? Is it because they inherit from their husbands? or because they made the money themselves? In either case, I'm not sure they'd be eager sports fans. </p>
<p>Women have contributed quite largely to either their or their husbands' colleges. But from what I've seen, they endowed things that one would expect from pre-Title IX women: libraries (much needed!) scholarships and fellowships, particular programs in area studies, social spaces, etc... As I see it, these reflect not only the wishes of the colleges but also probably the college experiences of the women. I believe that women who were really into sports in college have not yet hit their strides financially.</p>
<p>One of those factoids I heard long ago. Here's a citation</p>
<p>"Ronnie Polanecszky. Philadelphia Daily News, March 8, 2004.
In the last several decades, women in the Western world have been rising to new positions of status and power. Yet while women are coming into positions similar to men, their philanthropic activity pales in comparison to their male counterparts. In fact, women own over 60 percent of the wealth in America, but this resource has not yet been tapped effectively. The United Way of Philadelphia organized an event for women to encourage them to give of their resources toward causes in which they have a specific interest. While men traditionally are interested in donating money to hospitals, educational institutions and government organizations, women are more interested in things relating to the home and to the nurturing-type activities that happen in the home. Consequently, one United Way executive suggests that women explore giving toward food and shelter programs, literacy training, after-school activities, health screenings and mentoring programs"</p>
<p>I think you are correct on their giving proclivities.</p>
<p>Barrons:</p>
<p>Actually, women also give to the arts quite substantially. The "ladies who lunch" sit on the boards of many museums, symphony orchestras, foundations, and educational programs. But I think the directions of their giving might change over the next decades.</p>
<p>Yes, Madison was fortunate enough to get something around $200 Million for a new performing arts center from the creator of the American Girl dolls. Actually her husband made the donation but it was mostly her money so to speak. I hope he cleared that at home first. I get in trouble for spending a grand without approval.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.overturecenter.com/history.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.overturecenter.com/history.htm</a></p>
<p>My d's college has a $1.4 billion endowment. Pretty good for a bunch of girls, especially given that they had 50-100 years less time than the major boy's LACs to do it. Oh, and what is turning out to be a pretty substantial engineering school.</p>
<p>Rugby is BIG. ;)</p>
<p>The sport my daughter participates in (volleyball) is very expensive. Few if any high school athletes advance to the D1 scholarship level without several years of club volleyball preparation, and the vast majority need to participate at an elite level to be competitive in the scholarship round, entailing more practices and more travel and hence higher out-of-pocket costs. Average annual costs for an elite athlete in the upper ages of junior girls volleyball is around $5,000 after expenses. Most of these athletes play a minimum of 4 years of club, with a large percentage averaging 5-8 years. We are talking about anywhere from $8,000 to $20,000 for four years for most of these athletes, and up to twice that for the ones who start young. </p>
<p>My point in writing this is to point out that while it's nice to keep an eye on gender equity, there is nothing fair or equitable regarding who really has the opportunities to participate at the college level in many of these sports. College fencing, crew, lacrosse, volleyball, etc., provide opportunities for young women, yes, but mostly they provide opportunities for young women from families of some means. I am aware that there are exceptions and there is always a story about a disadvantaged youth coming out of the inner city who finds success on the rowing team, but there were also success stories about female athletes back in the day when men dominated sports. I'm not especially interested in exceptions. </p>
<p>Hand-wringing over Title IX is a nice distraction from the fact that for many sports, there is nothing fair or equitable about college participation opportunities. There are a number of struggling programs that seek to provide opportunities for disadvantaged youth to get the prep training needed to compete for college athletic scholarships. (An example would be the Starlings program in girls volleyball.) I'd love to see more op ed pieces on those and less on Title IX.</p>
<p>So that's why so many of the college women's volleyball players are tall blondes who look like they don't need the money. Interesting.</p>