Girls Can Play Too: How Does Title IX Fit in with Athletics at St. Olaf?
Jill Gauger
Abstract:
This paper is going to explore Title IX’s impact on collegiate sports
and how differently the title is perceived by different people.
Title IX is the law that requires colleges receiving federal funds to
provide equitable sports opportunities for women. I will be
focusing on Title IX at St. Olaf, but will also explore some aspects of
Division I schools to compare how differently the same law is played
out in different settings. I found that Title IX has done
tremendous things, and created immense amounts of opportunity, but
still has a way to go. Men and women alike agree that Title IX is
a terrific law, but sometimes the way it is implemented causes problems
and further set-backs.
The Setting/Community:
St. Olaf College is made up of about 40 % males and 60% females.
It is a very liberal school and is interested in creating opportunities
for everyone. Because St. Olaf is so concerned with providing
opportunities for each person, it is easy to believe that the athletic
community works harmoniously as a team to create this opportunity
within their department. The group that I studied consists of St.
Olaf’s athletic administrators. Their group is made up of 18 coaches
(five women and twelve men for twenty-seven teams), plus an athletic
director, a campus activities director, two athletic trainers, an
academic assistant, and more. I spoke with five male coaches (who
are involved with 7 of the men’s teams and 2 of the women’s teams) and
4 female coaches (who are involved with 4 of the women’s teams), plus
the athletic director, the director of campus activities, one of the
athletic trainers, and the administrative assistant of the
department. This is a typical St. Olaf community, a group of
people who all work together in the best interest of the athletes on
campus. Each coach wants the best for their own team, but at the
same time fully supports the other teams, and is willing to work
together and share the limited facilities we have on campus. I
thought this group would allow me to get closer to the underlying
problems dealing with Title IX, rather than the problems at the
surface, like why the men’s soccer team gets pizza after a road trip
when the girls get bag lunches. Title IX is more of an emotional
issue, and the pioneers who have fought for what we have today should
be recognized. The following is a breakdown of the Head coaches
of both men’s and women’s teams at St. Olaf, based on the Higher
Education Act Reporting.
Head Coaches of Men’s Teams
Male coaches head count
Female coaches head count
Baseball 1
Basketball 1
Football 1
Golf 1
Ice Hockey 1
Skiing: Alpine 1
Soccer 1
Swimming/Diving 1
Tennis 1
Track & Field, CC 2 (same coach for both)
Wrestling 1
Other: Nordic 1
Total Coaching Positions 13
Head Coaches of Women’s Teams
Male Coaches-Head
Count
Female Coaches-Head Count
Basketball 1
Golf 1
Ice Hockey 1
Skiing: Alpine 1
Soccer 1
Softball 1
Swimming/Diving 1
Tennis 1
Track & Field, CC 2 (same coach for both)
Volleyball 1
Other: Nordic 1
Total Coaching Positions 6 6
See Appendix A to see the make-up of male and female athletes for each sport.
I learned that these people work in an environment in which they sit
down and make decisions together, for example, about the facilities
they have to share. More specifically, the field-house is rotated
for each team throughout the week; so say the men’s track team gets it
at 3:00pm on Mondays, then they would have it at 6:00pm on Tuesdays,
and maybe 10:00pm on Wednesdays. It is done this way so that no
team gets the best time slot every day. The teams also rotate the
locker rooms in Skoglund every few years so that no one team gets the
better locker room facility more often than the others. From my
perspective it seems like the group as a whole gets along well, and
enjoys working together.
The Problem:
The St. Olaf men’s and women’s tennis teams went to
Bethel together to play their respective matches. The men’s team
played in a great facility at a club, and the women’s team played in
the Bethel field house on a wooden floor. What is wrong with this
scenario? When I first began my research, I planned on uncovering
why the women’s athletic teams at St. Olaf are treated more poorly than
the men’s teams. I thought there would be a lot to uncover within
this topic, like why the men get a lot more money, better equipment,
and more perks in general. This is a general perception among the
female athletes on campus. And after hearing about the episode at
Bethel, I thought I would be able to discover a lot on this topic at
St. Olaf. As I got further into my research, I found that this
was a dead end road. St. Olaf does not treat their men’s and
women’s teams extremely different, in fact they are treated very
similarly. Cindy Book, the Athletics Director said that St. Olaf
is equal in all eleven program areas for men and women, that the
Intercollegiate Athletics Policy Interpretation uses to analyze for
compliance, which include: equipment and supplies; scheduling of
games and practice time; travel and per diem allowances; tutoring;
coaching; locker rooms, practice and competitive facilities; medical
and training facilities and services; housing and dining facilities and
services; publicity; support services; and recruitment of
student-athletes. It is not law to be equal in each of these
program areas, yet St. Olaf makes the effort to be equal here.
There is no huge difference in funding for male and female teams
either. Some of the women’s teams even get more than their
respective men’s teams, for example, women’s basketball, nordic skiing,
and ice hockey each received more money per capita for their teams in
the academic year 2000/2001 (Higher Education Act Reporting [HEAR],
2001). This definitely does not make up for the rest of the
female teams who have male counterparts and receive significantly less
money, but it proves that in some cases women actually do receive more
than men (See Appendix B for a break down of the operating expenses per
team).
After finding out that my first plan wasn’t going to lead me anywhere
at St. Olaf, I decided to look at Title IX in a broader sense, and get
a feel for how it has impacted our school. From there I went to
some literature, and tried to find some problems that others have
explored which might also work for me to investigate at St. Olaf.
Douglas Van Everen, the head of College Gymnastics Association said
that “the current interpretation of Title IX is wrong and needs to be
changed, quickly (Moyer, 2002).” In the same article, a wrestling
coach exclaimed that the way Title IX is being enforced today, is
discrimination. I found this idea to be a common theme throughout
most of the literature that I investigated. Because it seemed to
be such a common issue, I decided to include it in my research of St.
Olaf. This will be investigated in depth in the findings section.
The main problem that I found with Title IX, centers around the
first prong of compliance. In order to comply with the title, a school
must meet one of these three methods (Bonnette 1994):
1. Provide participation opportunities for women and
men that are substantially proportionate to their respective rates of
enrollment as full-time undergraduate students; or
2. Demonstrate a history and continuing practice of program expansion for the underrepresented sex; or
3. Fully and effectively accommodate the interests and abilities of the underrepresented sex.
*It’s important to recognize that the law (as well as these prongs)
only apply to recognized varsity sports. Club and intramural
sports are not funded directly by the school, instead they receive some
funding from the student government.
Most schools seem to overlook the last two prongs, and then because
they have close to 50/50 enrollment, they think they need to have 50/50
athletic participation. Rather than adding a women’s sport
now and then to show a history of program expansion or take a pole to
check accommodation of the interests of the underrepresented sex,
schools cut men’s teams and they get closer to proportionality in that
way. The problem is not Title IX, it is the way that the law is
implemented at individual institutions.
The emphasis in college sport has turned to revenue
production of spectator sports rather than on the lifelong benefits of
sports participation (Birrell & Cole, 1994). This is another
common problems dealing with Title IX. The proportionality rule
almost always boils down to cutting teams because schools don’t have
the money to add a woman’s team and keep the men’s team. So,
schools neglect all the benefits students gain by being athletes, and
instead they worry about the money. They focus on keeping the
football team afloat so that money will continue to come in. In
all reality though, it has been proven that football rarely even
supports their own team (see findings for more details).
Methodology:
I began my research by conducting some interviews with the students,
the actual athletes, as well as the administrators. The students
however, didn’t seem to have much of an opinion on the topic.
Most of the athletes didn’t know enough about Title IX to be able to
discuss the issues in detail. Also, most of our athletes on
campus are protected by their coaches from the problems dealing with
Title IX. One track runner claimed “I’ve never had to worry about
that stuff because my coach always takes care of it for us.”
Also, one hockey player didn’t really even notice much of a difference
in the program when the team was making their own ends meet versus when
the school was funding it. Everything that Title IX provides for
athletes today is basically taken for granted because athletes of my
generation have always had these opportunities, so we are simply used
to them being there.
After talking with several athletes, I decided to focus my research on
the administrative community. As mentioned in the setting, I
interviewed numerous coaches at St. Olaf to see what they thought about
the title, and its implementation here at St. Olaf. I began each
interview by having them sign a consent form, and then explained to
them what my project was about. An example of the consent form
follows:
I certify that I have had the nature and procedure of this study on
athletics and Title IX, and problems with Title IX (specifically
at St. Olaf) described to me. Jill Gauger has described the
potential benefits and risks of my participation in this study, and has
informed me that my data will be kept in confidence. I understand
that this interview will help with the study of Title IX for So/An 373
instructed by Chris Chiappari.
Date:
Signature:
The main questions that I tried to ask everybody follow (but of course
there was slight variation with each coach depending on which sport
they coached):
1. What do you think about Title IX?
2. Do you think Title IX has unintended consequences?
3. What do you think about institutions cutting some
men’s programs like wrestling in order to provide for more female
opportunities?
4. Do you think Title IX causes discrimination? (toward lower profile men’s teams)
5. What do you believe is the cause of the growth of women’s sports?
6. Do you think this would have happened without the help of Title IX?
7. What do you think about the new idea of getting rid of Title IX? (There is much
hostility coming from lower profile men’s teams toward Title IX, and
there is even a bill being discussed to eliminate the title)
8. How do you think this would affect St. Olaf athletics?
9. If Title IX were eliminated, do you think women would still have the opportunities
they have today?
10. How do you feel about Title IX and St. Olaf?
11. Do you think there is a better way Title IX could be implemented (not based on
proportions)?
12. Do you think Title IX is an effective law?
13. Does it cause more relief or more harm?
I also asked these questions of the athletic director and the director
of campus activities. I chose these questions because I
thought they were broad, open ended, and unbiased enough that each
interviewee would be able to expand, and go off on what they felt would
be the most important aspects of Title IX to discuss.
Within my findings I found a lot of uniformity in the responses to
these questions. I usually only found variation when the topic of
conversation strayed from the interview questions to more personal
experiences and ideas. A huge weakness of this research was that
many of the coaches did not want to be quoted or named for fear of
being fired, or taken out of context. This says a lot about the
power of Title IX. It’s really hard to talk about my findings
when I can’t refer to specific interviews or points that certain
interviewees brought up; however, after doing all my research, I
understand where these coaches are coming from, Title IX is a very
sensitive topic. As a result my write up will not include any
quotes or specifics attributed to any of the individuals I spoke with,
unless they gave the go ahead.
Findings:
Lets first go to the incident regarding the Bethel
tennis match. I asked Coach Nesbit to respond to the incident,
and this is what he had to say:
“The Bethel coach does not see (like I see) that the surface that they
have in their field house is not a good tennis surface. Consequently,
he was pretty adamant that the women play there. On the other hand, he
chose that the men with their more powerful games (especially in the
serving category) would play at the indoor tennis club. Since I was the
guest team, I didn't have any recourse except to complain that I didn't
like his choice. On the other hand, my women's team felt slighted
because of the lesser quality of surface and facility. Being the guest
team gave me few options. Here, at St. Olaf, we play our men's and
women's home indoor matches away at Owatonna Indoor Tennis Center. So I
try to treat both teams with equal respect. I think with the Bethel
situation, that one of the main issues was that their coach truly
believes that their field house is a fine surface. I don't agree and
either do my women's team who played there, but the host school gets
their way in these situations in our conference play.”
To me this is a great example of the attitude St. Olaf coaches have
toward equality between our men’s and women’s teams. Coach Nesbit
especially has a unique point of view because he coaches both the men’s
and women’s tennis teams. He has first hand experiences with both
teams, so he should be a good judge of whether the two genders are
treated equally or not. He told me that he feels good about Title
IX here at St. Olaf. He feels the women are given good
opportunities to get involved in athletics, and that their programs are
not sub-standard to the men's programs. He also feels the teams
have good coaches and the same kind of budgets as the men's
teams. More specifically to the tennis team, he tries to treat
the two teams equally. Equally to him doesn't mean that he does the
exact same things all the time with both teams, but he tries to treat
them with equal importance and respect. Here are some examples he
gave me: The budgets for the two teams are the exact same. They
have separate practices and he is at both. Almost always, he
schedules the men's and women's matches on different dates so he can be
at both contests (with two exceptions this year). The only thing
I don’t understand here is that when I looked at the Higher Education
Act Reporting the women’s tennis budget for the academic year of
2000/2001 was significantly lower than the men, the total operating
expenses for the women’s team was almost $6,000 less than the
men. Hopefully coach Nesbit was saying that for this past season
(academic year of 2001/2002), the budgets were made equal, which would
be an example of another great improvement.
What do you think about Title IX? This was the first question I
asked every person that I interviewed. It yielded many positive
responses, just a few of them were: it has provided great opportunities
for women, it has promoted and expanded the horizon of women’s sports,
and it was made for all the right reasons. However, every
interviewee also had a but to these positive statements. They all
agreed that it is not implemented in the most efficient way, it is
misinterpreted, and it has put a lot of stress and blame on women’s
teams. The following is an example of how we can relate Title IX
to our personal lives, and see how ridiculous the first prong can be.
“A family has two sons. One is a football player, one a wrestler. Their parents
buy expensive equipment for them, send them to sports camps, and do everything they can to support their interests.
Then a daughter is born. When she is old enough, she comes to her
parents and says, ‘I want to play.’ Because the family has
devoted all its money to the athletics interests of its first two
children, however, the parents face a difficult decision (Suggs, 2000).”
The most likely outcome of this predicament is that the family will
decide to cut back on a camp or two for the boys so their sister can
also have the opportunity to give her sport a try as well. It is
very unlikely that mom and dad are going to say sorry to their daughter
and that she can’t play because her brothers are using all the money on
their sports. Just as likely, the parents probably won’t tell
their sons that they can’t play anymore because their sister now wants
to. College sports across the country are experiencing a lack of
funding, just like the family in the scenario above, but rather than
reallocating the money so that everyone gets a piece of the pie,
presidents and athletic directors are choosing to cut teams (or tell
one of their children sorry, you can’t play because your sister gets to
instead). Title IX is a great law, and has opened countless
opportunities for female athletes. However, at the same time it
is constantly being blamed for poor decisions that school
administrators are making. This is the reason men’s wrestling and
gymnastic programs are making such a stink about Title IX when their
programs get cut. Their school administrators are cutting their
programs in order to comply with the first prong of Title IX.
Then rather than blaming it on their lack of creativity to fix the
situation, they take the easy way out and cut one of the “lower
profile” men’s teams, and blame it on Title IX.
For the sake of convenience, most schools choose the first prong
because it is the easiest to prove (the three prongs are listed in the
problem section). This is the reason Title IX has been constantly
criticized. St. Olaf went through something similar to this a few
years ago. At that time, the men’s hockey, wrestling, and golf
programs were cut from the budget. During that period, St. Olaf
experienced major budget cuts, for example the paracollege was cut, and
all the departments had to make cuts, some were even merged. The
athletics program was also feeling this school wide budget cut, which
is why the three programs that I just mentioned were cut. One
thing that I found to be very interesting during my interviews was the
variety of responses for the reasoning of this cut. The most
common response I got was that the teams were cut strictly for budget
reasons. However, when I asked if they thought Title IX had
anything to with the reason why three men’s teams were cut, and no
women’s teams, they all paused to think. Then, most of them
agreed that Title IX probably was indirectly a cause of why no women’s
teams were cut.
The other response I heard was that the men’s hockey team was cut for
budget reasons, but more specifically because the women’s club hockey
team was pushing to be varsity. And if the men’s team was cut,
then the school wouldn’t have to add the new women’s team. This
is the type of controversy that is always occurring with Title IX
(primarily in D1 schools). The question at hand then is whether
the end justifies the means.
St. Olaf went about dealing with this in a very sophisticated
manner. They allowed the teams to stay varsity as long as they
could finance themselves, and the men’s hockey and wrestling teams were
supported by their alumni for two years, by earning over
$205,000. These teams got back on the school’s budget after
fighting a tough battle. Now, the official position St.
Olaf has on cutting teams, is that it won’t cut. Plus, the
women’s hockey team was added as a varsity sport in 2001, and it
received a great response. The men’s hockey team especially
welcomed the women’s team with open arms. By adding a women’s
team the men had to share ice time, which was a minor down fall, but at
the same time adding a women’s team provides the men with more
publicity and more fundraising for the rinks and facilities that they
share.
“Everyone seems to agree that it is wrong for universities to cut men’s
teams. The question remains, however, whether providing equitable
opportunities for women is right enough to supersede that wrong (Suggs,
2000).” Every person in the athletics department that I talked to
agreed that it’s extremely important to provide equal opportunities for
women. But at the same time none of them thought that cutting
men’s teams was the way to go about providing equal opportunity.
When I asked the question about coming up with a better way of
implementing Title IX, almost everyone believed that simply moving away
from the proportionality rule and focusing on the two other prongs
would help immensely. Thinking about proportionality at St. Olaf,
we would have to add tons of more women’s varsity teams and still
probably cut some men in order to meet the 60/40 quo. This would
be almost impossible (today we’re at about 44% women athletes and 56%
men athletes), there aren’t even enough sports or interest in enough
more sports that could be added for women here. It would also
have been really hard to show a history and continuing practice of
program expansion for the underrepresented gender, because most of our
women’s programs were added in 1983, until we just added hockey one
year ago. Yet still St. Olaf complies with Title IX because we meet the
interest of the underrepresented sex.
A big issue that I came across often dealt with proportionality and
football. “Sports Illustrated” had an article about treating
football as a third gender so that they wouldn’t throw proportionality
off so much. This idea comes from the basis that schools are either
paring away from football or cutting low profile men’s teams in order
to comply with proportionality. Their argument is that the law is
supposed to lift disadvantaged groups, not lower others into a
disadvantaged status (Wolff & O’Brien, 1995). This is exactly
what our staff at St. Olaf was saying as well. By moving away
from proportionality and focusing on the other prongs, neither football
nor nonrevenue generating men’s teams will be as highly impacted by
Title IX. Many people believe that football and basketball
underwrite women’s sports, and so it’s necessary to keep them
flourishing. The truth of the matter is that only about one fifth
of NCAA’s football teams even pay for themselves. One third of
the D1 programs are running an annual deficit that averages more than
one million dollars (Bonnette 1994). Looking at this aspect,
football definitely needs the federal funds that are received by
athletic departments, so there is no way they can be excluded from the
Title. As a result, we have to choose a separate way to meet
Title IX guidelines than proportionality.
If schools are going to stick to proportionality, a few of our coaches
thought that it would be a good idea to make a separate pool for all
the sports that don’t have opposite gender counterparts. In which
case, here at St. Olaf women’s volleyball, men’s wrestling, and men’s
football would be excluded. Then we could make sure all the other
sports were equal between the genders, and then deal with the ones that
don’t have an opposite sex team to compare themselves to. From
there, schools could try to make the excluded sports as equal to the
rest of the teams as possible. I was told that football takes at
least $400 to outfit a single player, and without the proper equipment
the liability costs would skyrocket for the school. This
obviously can’t be compared to volleyball or any other female sport for
that matter; none of the women’s teams need to outfit over seventy
players at $400 per player. But men’s soccer can and should be
compared to women’s soccer, and they should be equal. The NCAA
Gender-Equity Task Force states that:
“An athletics program can be considered gender equitable when the
participants in both the men’s and women’s sports programs would accept
as fair and equitable the overall program of the other gender. No
individual should be discriminated against on the basis of gender,
institutionally or nationally, in intercollegiate athletics.”
This is why Title IX can’t just be based on the percentages of male and
female participants, it needs to be dealt with more care and
intricacy. The sheer fact that there are the same amount of men
and women competing in school athletics, does not mean that they are
equal. One of the coaches I spoke with said that she hates the
term equitable because all it means is that things will never be equal.
This can be demonstrated by one of our St. Olaf coaches who used to
coach a men’s team, but last year, he took on the responsibilities of
the women’s team as well. It was interesting to talk with him
about the equity between the two teams because he admitted that he is
in the process of trying to make things better for the women.
Until the women’s team became his own, he never realized that things
were unequal between the two teams. It’s great that he is making
the changes and working toward getting the men and the women on the
same page now, but it’s also disturbing to realize how unnoticed the
women’s teams are often left. Equity may exist between the men’s
and women’s teams here at St. Olaf, but they are far from equal.
Title IX problems almost always boil down to money
issues. Which ever sport is thought to bring in the most revenue
will get the most attention and things like that are often the case at
D1 schools. What makes St. Olaf unique in this aspect, is that
they realize athletics aren’t just to earn money and school
status. The athletics staff believe that athletics teach life
lessons and help students learn how to cooperate and work in groups,
act as leaders, and learn how to handle pressure. Many male
student athletes are the ones who grow up and become part of the
Fortune five hundred. Also, one of my interviewees told me about
a 1990 study done by the Institute for Athletics and Education that
showed that female athletes are less likely to get involved with drugs,
less likely to have unwanted pregnancies, show higher levels of
self-esteem and less depression, and they are less likely to get
involved in an abusive relationship.
Another interview question I asked that I believe is
worth going into a bit is what everyone believes is the cause of the
growth of women’s sports. Once again everyone had similar
responses. Each person attributed the majority of the growth to
Title IX. One thing that I found very interesting however is that
some of the women I spoke with also gave credit to the pioneers, the
people who fought the battles to gain equity. Title IX created an
opportunity and once it was out there, the participation rose
dramatically. This goes against the common myth that women aren’t
as interested in sports as men. Simply by looking at the
statistic which states that in 1972 the female participation in high
school athletics was 8%, but has now risen to at least 40%, we can see
that women weren’t “interested” before because they did not have the
opportunity to be interested (University of Iowa). Maybe they
aren’t as interested as men, but there is proof that there is enough
interest that it can’t go unnoticed. Once women were given the
opportunity, they made something of it, and they continued to grow and
improve, and along with this growth, more people became interested in
watching and they gained more exposure. The University of
Minnesota women’s basketball team is a great example of this.
They had a great season this past year, and sold out tickets for next
season. As long as the opportunity is available, someone will
jump on it and make something of it.
When I was talking with one of my male interviewees,
he thought that focusing on the interest prong would be very helpful
for schools because he believed that they wouldn’t have to add as many
female sports. I think in general at St. Olaf, this is a pretty
common view, most male and female students that I talked to on campus
believed this to be the case. The coach thinks that in general
men are just more interested in sports: just by his observation,
he sees more men involved in intramural sports, and more men shooting
baskets during open gym time. What he does not realize is that
women are often intimidated by male athletes so they won’t put their
selves in such positions as sharing the open gym time. I am going
to attach an article to help demonstrate why women often feel
intimidated in places like the gym or weight room (see appendix C).
As far as intramural sports go, there are no female only intramural
teams, and the coed teams want as few females as possible because the
males on the teams think the girls are inferior. This limits
females opportunities immensely. The reason that there are no
female only intramural teams, is because there aren’t enough females
interested to form a league of female only teams, but at the same time,
there is more interest shown than can be provided for based on the
limited numbers women are given on the coed teams. If we look at
this issue of intramural sports, we would open a whole new can of
worms, so we are going to leave that alone for now since it’s not
connected with Title IX.
On this same note, I would also like to discuss a
conversation I had with one of my female interviewees. We talked
a lot about how women don’t have the same talent and athletic capacity
as men, which is why it’s so important to have Title IX and equal
opportunity. If we only had one soccer team, one basketball team,
and so on, the men would always make the teams and the women would get
cut because it is rare that women are at the same level as men.
That doesn’t mean however, that women’s hard work shouldn’t pay
off. Having separate and equal teams, is all about providing
opportunity. It’s not about women trying to become equal athletes
as men, it’s about having equal opportunities as them. If we look
at football or wrestling, two sports without countering female teams,
we can see that hardly any women try out for these teams. There
are two reasons for this: one, most women aren’t as good or
strong as the men, they have much less muscle mass; and two, women are
intimidated when put in such situations. This helps demonstrate
why it’s so important to provide women with opportunities separate from
the men.
Conclusions:
Along the lines of the pioneers who fought for what we have today, I
would like to discuss the generation of the current athletes, and what
we haven’t had to go through. We (college students today) have
always had opportunities handed to us, and we have never had to fight
much if at all for them. Hamline University has a women’s
basketball coach young enough so that she also has had her
opportunities handed to her. For years the women’s basketball
team took vans to play up at Concordia, where the men took nice comfy
buses. This is completely against the law, but the women didn’t
realize that it was something worth making a fuss over and something
they could fight for until someone else brought it to their
attention. Until this past year, the women were given much less
than the men, and they didn’t even realize it was a problem.
Today we have become almost immune to the idea of fighting for things,
we simply don’t want to deal with the emotion.
We have so many strong willed and determined people to thank for what
we have today. Gary Wicks (director of campus activities) told me
a story about when St. Olaf used to have two separate athletic
facilities, one for the men and one for the women. Skoglund was
for the men, and it had much nicer and larger facilities, which women
could only use on limited occasions like Sunday afternoons. Then
when the second facility was closed and women were moved down to
Skoglund, it wasn’t the treat women thought it would be. All the
equipment and laundry were in the men’s locker room, and the women had
to walk upstairs and around and then back down to drop off their
laundry because they were not allowed to walk down the hall of the
men’s locker rooms. One day one of the female coaches was fed up
with this system, and she brought the Dean down, and had him
pretend he was a woman, and he had to go to the locker room, walk up
stairs and around, then go back down, knock on the door to drop off the
laundry and get a clean towel, then walk back up stairs, around, and
back down to put the clean towel away, and then he could be on his
way. It was things like this that men never even knew existed
because they didn’t have to experience them, which the pioneers of
women’s athletics helped correct for us, and provide us with the
opportunities we have today.
Yes, we have opportunities today, but men and women are still not
treated equally, and who knows if we ever will be. Even just a
few years ago when St. Olaf built Manitou Field House, we ran into
gender discrimination. The women’s track locker room was also
going to be a men’s visiting locker room. So, they were going to
put in one or two toilets and a bunch of urinals. Then the point
was brought up, that men don’t use urinals at home, so why is it a
necessity to have them in the locker room when it’s primarily going to
be a women’s locker room, and women can not use the urinals.
Finally, they came to their senses and decided to go with toilets;
however, after the toilet episode, they were going to put old lockers
in the women’s locker room, and brand new ones in the men’s. This
time no one even made an issue of it because it was simply getting
old. Ironically however the male athletic director said to one of
the female coaches that he was shocked no one said anything about the
lockers, and in response the woman told him that it was his job to make
sure things are equal, not hers or any other coach’s, and the next
thing she knew, both locker rooms had new lockers. These are just
two examples of countless battles that have been fought for equity in
sports right here at St. Olaf.
It’s very fascinating to hear about how Title IX has affected the women
who have watched it grow and develop. These women have fought
tough battles, and have had to give themselves not so nice images at
times in order to really get what they deserved. Women have been
positively and negatively affected by this law all over the
country. Today women are given numerous opportunities that didn’t
even exist when our mothers were in school. At the same time,
women’s athletics are becoming more and more competitive, resulting in
less and less administrative jobs going to women. A few of my
interviewees told me that in 1972, more than 90% of women’s teams were
coached by females, but unfortunately, today the number is down around
50%. St. Olaf has 50% of our women’s teams coached by women,
which seems to be close to the recent statistic. However, St.
Olaf does have a female athletics director, and today women have a
better chance of becoming an NCAA institution president than an
athletics director. And we all know how common it is to have
female institution presidents. For the most part, people believe
that Title IX has opened the opportunities for women that it had set
out to do years ago.
From the male perspective Title IX has provided many men’s teams with
better or extra publicity, revenue, and facilities like ice hockey and
basketball. Men who are fathers of daughters are also seeing
these effects in a much more positive light now: they want their
daughters to have every possible opportunity under the sun. But
of course, the title has also had a negative impact on men. They
have lost many sports to the blame of Title IX and proportionality
because schools are too lazy to find a way to manage their budgets
while providing opportunity for women as well as keeping opportunities
alive for men. What I found to be the underlying theme to all the
discussions on Title IX goes back to the quote, “Everyone seems to
agree that it is wrong for universities to cut men’s teams. The
question remains, however, whether providing equitable opportunities
for women is right enough to supersede that wrong (Suggs, 2000).”
By looking at the findings I have uncovered while researching Title IX
at St. Olaf, I have realized that Title IX has indeed opened many
opportunities for women just like it had intended to. However,
there is still a long way to go. First, there needs to be a way
to implement the law without it being blamed for the collapse of other
sports. One athlete I interviewed stated that: “Title
IX killed men’s gymnastics.” As we’ve discovered, Title IX didn’t
cause men’s gymnastics to fold, institutions did. Yet, ideas like
this are giving female athletes a bad image, and a though time from
male athletes. An idea for schools to comply with Title IX and
not cut men’s teams would be for schools to take surveys of the student
body to check their compliance within the interest prong. This
way they might not have to add women’s teams, even if they aren’t in
compliance with proportionality, as long as they are meeting the
interest of the students. If institutions choose this prong to
use, and they still don’t meet compliance with the title, often there
is not much that can be done because funding is so low. Because
there is such a lack of money, schools are often going to have to face
the decision of cutting or reallocating funds. I think the most
fair way to go about it would be to reallocate funds, and give a little
and take a little, this way at least no teams will be fully cut.
I believe that Title IX has done great things, it has allowed me to be
able to compete in athletics for as long as I can remember, and school
athletics since fifth grade, the same year they were provided for the
boys. My mom’s only athletic opportunity was to be a cheerleader
on the sidelines for the guys. In this sense, I am very thankful
and lucky for all the opportunities that have been provided for
me. On the other hand, I still believe that a lot can be done to
create more equality between men and women. For one, attitudes
must change, just like in any other inequality issue. I often
overhear guys talking about how girls don’t even deserve to play, and
how they take money away from them. To be perfectly honest, I
don’t think these views will change until these guys become fathers of
daughters, and then they’ll think that their daughter should be allowed
equal opportunities. I also think that educating people about
Title IX might open their eyes some, but I don’t think it will affect
enough people that it will make a difference. Maybe if we could
go back to middle school when the girls are bigger than the boys, we
could somehow get them to realize that we can play too.
Appendix A:
Based on the academic year 2000-2001 Higher Education Act Reporting.
Per Capita Expenses
Sport Men’s Women’s
Baseball 537
Basketball 706 788
Football 470
Golf 465 345
Ice Hockey 694 1,169
Skiing: Alpine 1,830 1,830
Soccer 267 236
Softball 1,064
Swimming & Diving 500 353
Tennis 888 121
Track & Field, CC 216 149
Volleyball 572
Wrestling 487
Total Operating Expense $198,519 $150,107
Percent of Total 56.9% 43.1%
Appendix B:
Based on the academic year 2000-2001 Higher Education Act Reporting.
Number of Participants
Sport Men’s teams Women’s Teams
Baseball 34
Basketball 16 15
Football 77
Golf 15 12
Ice Hockey 31 22
Skiing: Alpine 11 11
Soccer 46 41
Softball 21
Swimming & Diving 32 28
Tennis 8 9
Outdoor Track & FieldIndoor Track & FieldCC 606024 545451
Volleyball 18
Wrestling 17
Total Participants 439 343
Percent of Participants 56.1% 43.9%
Unduplicated Count 366 280
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