Federal sports quotas kill dreams of young minority men

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I mean, it would fine if we could just kill the dreams of white boys. But, when it effects minorities, then it becomes a big issue. Many of these collegiate sports programs are the only place where many black convicts, dregs, and illiterates can find employment.

True. I guess encouraging a minority student to apply himself to learning science, advanced mathematics or some other non-sport subject is too much for the powers-that-be at these places of "higher learning" to ask.

That crazy law has been doing it's mischief since the seventies and nobody has raised a finger to fight it or change it. Remember the UCLA men's diving team? Gone. And who really won?

National Football League and the National Basketball Association, which use colleges as their farm teams,could with money step in and balance this out which is probably unlikely so the "Hastert Fellowships" after Dennis Hastert, a former wrestling coach could thus come to symbolize the effort to rescue both women's sports and his beloved wrestling which is one of the sports (gymnastics, swimming etc) to suffer under Title IX ..this new bill and the fellowship funding would provide
for college fellowships to help participants in both women's sports and the men's sports that lack the "power" of football and basketball which use up most all the money in the pot with little left over for other sports. It's an election year..will see what happens.

by the way Rep. Jim Leach, an Iowa Republican has written this Hastert Fellowship bill..Leach says:"its not men's wrestling vs. women's soccer or women's hockey, but football vs. the world."

"for college fellowships to help participants in both women's sports and the men's sports that lack the "power" of football and basketball which use up most all the money in the pot with little left over for other sports"

Mens football and basketball programs are the only money makers for most colleges. Far from "using up most all the money in the pot" as you say, they fund the entire athletic dept., both male and female, in most cases.

The problem is in order to keep the money makers, mens football and basketball, they have to drop most other mens sports because of title IV. Women have a greater varity of sports programs from which to choose in college then men.

In my opinion, there should only be one way to get a scholarship: Apply yourself academically and get good grades.

Let's put the "scholar" back in scholarship.

This story out today on IX..2 stories might mean the Republican "might get some play..will add this to yours:

Sunday, September 29, 2002
Federal agency renews commitment
By The Tribune-Review

Some of western Pennsylvania's biggest schools don't advertise it, but they've run afoul of the U.S. Office for Civil Rights and Title IX.

In the past five years, OCR agents have investigated the sports programs at Pine-Richland, North Allegheny and Jeannette City schools after complaints by parents and students. All these schools are now in good standing and won't lose federal funding, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

The Pennsylvania Department of Education doesn't know whether any schools are in good standing under the state law mandating gender equity in sports. Although Chapter IV of the state's education code tasks the department with policing sexual discrimination in athletics, insiders say regulators have never investigated a single school.

"It's very important for parents to be concerned about these issues," said Beth Gaydos, a department spokeswoman. "If they suspect any violation of Chapter IV and how that relates to interscholastic athletics, they should call us. We will, of course, address their concerns."

But when the Tribune-Review requested the department's compliance history, officials took two days to determine that this was an area they had to regulate.

On paper, districts that continue to skew athletics in favor of boys' teams risk losing state and federal funding.

But that's an idle threat. Although Title IX bars gender discrimination at every school that receives federal money, the OCR has never pulled the plug on a school's financing.

The agency didn't need to, said Norma Cantu, who recently stepped down after eight years at the OCR's helm.

"The spirit of cooperation was there in athletics," she said. "We really do have a sense of fair play when it comes to athletics. People want to follow the rules. They want to know how the rules apply and that they apply to everyone equally. So the rules of fair play really govern Title IX and athletics.

"What's important is that we're trying to ensure compliance. We will take you to court if we need to. Our office has no compunction about doing its job. But we try to do it in the most courteous, professional way."

Title IX sports cases make up a sliver of the OCR's caseload. In fact, athletic issues account for less than 1 percent of the complaints the agency receives every year. Sixty times as many calls deal with special education. Congress tasks the agency with ferreting out the misuse of federal tax dollars by institutions that discriminate against students because of race, ethnicity, physical handicap or mental state - not just gender.

Before Cantu's leadership, Title IX experts said, the OCR's enforcement record in sports was nonexistent. From 1980 to 1992, the agency never aggressively sought compliance by public schools.

"Nothing was done," said Ellen Staurowsky, an Ithaca College professor who lectures on Title IX issues. "It was an embarrassment, really. There was a federal law the government simply refused to enforce."

That changed in 1992. First, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Franklin v. Gwinnett County Public Schools, a case from Georgia that gave female athletes the right to pursue monetary damages from school districts that discriminated against them. Educators then realized that violating Title IX could cost them money.

Second, President Clinton promised to reform the OCR and make Title IX a top issue. He started in 1993 by hiring Cantu, a West Texas lawyer, to take over the OCR and transform it into an instrument of change.

This is the "new" OCR that Pine-Richland and other schools faced, an agency that sought compliance through a policy of "customer-friendly" persuasion, smart mentoring and genial conciliation. That approach impressed Superintendent James Manley in 1999, when parents asked the OCR to investigate why the Allegheny County district didn't have a ninth-grade girls' basketball team. He calls the district's dealings with OCR "rewarding" and insists they made administrators more sensitive to gender issues.

"I had no problem whatsoever dealing with the people in that office working out a timeline for us," Manley said. "It did add to our workload - there's no question about that. It added additional reports. But I admired the attitude the office had in terms of just working with us, in terms of understanding our limitations and some of the issues we were working with here."

After forging an agreement with the OCR, Pine-Richland began regularly reporting the progress it made toward adding a team. Nearly three years later, the girls still aren't playing.

"You can't manufacture interest in a sport if it's not there," Manley said. "That's really it. We indicated what we would try to do to make students aware of what activities exist; that the opportunities were there to sign up; that the district was willing to add an additional coach and so forth.

"But in the final analysis, the interest just wasn't there. And they (OCR) were understanding."

In 1999, only six students said they would go out for a girls' ninth-grade basketball team. The same thing happened last year. So the team was never launched.

Chris Scherer, a former Pine-Richland coach who often has criticized the district for its treatment of girls' athletics, said lack of interest wasn't the true killer of the sport; poor scheduling provided the fatal blow. The girls were forced to choose between basketball and more popular sports, such as soccer, volleyball and cross country. That's because the Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League slots girls' ninth-grade basketball out of its traditional season - in the autumn, not the winter. In fact, most girls' sports are scheduled for the fall.

"You can't field a team of six or nine kids," said Scherer, who was fired last year. "You need at least 10, just to practice. I did my homework. But I was made to look like the bad guy because I didn't like the idea of a ninth-grade team. But there was a reason I didn't want it, and it had nothing to do with my girls, Title IX or anything else. If they'd played in the winter, I'd be all for it."

Despite the cloudy outcome at Pine-Richland, the OCR - working with a slim budget and facing fierce opposition from conservatives in Congress - still gets passing grades from advocates of women's sports.

"Given the history of inactivity in that office, Norma Cantu made her fame only by doing her job," Staurowsky said. "I admired her immensely for the degree of pressure that was brought to bear to make her not do her job, but she did."

Others are less enthusiastic about the OCR's renewed commitment to women's rights. University of Pittsburgh law professor Deborah Brake fought the Title IX battle in the courts for nearly a decade as a lead litigator for the National Women's Law Center. Although she won dozens of high-profile court cases, Brake wishes the feds had been more aggressive on behalf of female athletes.

"The agency so doesn't want to find a school in noncompliance, their preferred method is to eke out compromises," she said. "They try to get schools to do something inventive so they don't get slammed with noncompliance.

"OCR saw the schools as their constituency. They were very politically cautious of getting too involved in this."

That left Brake and other civil rights attorneys to do much of the precedent-setting Title IX work throughout the 1990s. Nevertheless, Brake said, the OCR served the cause by not backtracking on its original policy goals.

"In the end, that might be the OCR's most important achievement.