“The case illustrates the complexities — and some would say, the inanities — of the debate over gender and college athletics. … the official approach to gender parity now requires more than half of college athletic slots going to women.” [Minding the Campus] Plus: “Title IX: Coming to a High School Near You” [College Sports Council]
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If over half of college students are women, as is the case in many schools today, shouldn’t they be making up more of college athletics?
shouldn’t they be making up more of college athletics?
I would hope you would agree that there is a difference between voluntarily making up more of college athletics and being forced to make up more of college athletics.
In other words, I am all for everyone having the opportunity to participate in college athletics. I am against the law artificially forcing colleges or any school to force institutions to have sports for either gender to fill a quota.
Anyone who doesn’t think that cheerleading is as much a sport as many others is clearly refusing to give due credit to the activity based on old stereotypes rather than current reality. The refusal to recognize and treat it is a sport is also exposing the children who participate to greater risk of injury. As it is generally the participating girls, rather than boys, who go up in the air, that increased risk is disproportionately born by the participating girls. I know parents who have forbidden their daughters from participating in cheerleading as a result. As these girls are not interested in the other athletic programs available, they no longer participate in any school athletic activity. I don’t see how anyone can consider this an advance in equal opportunity.
One solution is simply to make sport and athletics mandatory for all female college students. Failure to participate would result in automatic expulsion. That way Title IX gets what it wants and its proponents are made to realise just how stupid they are.
“The refusal to recognize and treat it is a sport is also exposing the children who participate to greater risk of injury”
How so?
In other words, I am all for everyone having the opportunity to participate in college athletics. I am against the law artificially forcing colleges or any school to force institutions to have sports for either gender to fill a quota.
As long as some sports are reserved for particular genders, as they typically should be, schools are going to need provide an equal opportunity to play, which means a number of available positions proportional to the number of students of each gender.
which means a number of available positions proportional to the number of students of each gender.
No. The number of available positions should be based on interest in a sport in general.
There are schools that just make up varsity sports to fill the quota, whether there is a demand for the sport or not.
Sports were not always “varsity” sports. There were intra mural and club teams that moved up to the “varsity” / school sponsored level. Title IX does away with that. It looks at the students and says “you need this” rather than the students saying “we want this.”
Or “you will be a part of this” rather than “we want to be a part of it.”
Title IX makes the false assumption that all students are the same and all genders have the same interests.
[…] Thus achieving two of feminist litigators’ goals at once: 1) sending a message that cheerleading is not a government-approved aspiration for young women; 2) further humbling men’s college sports, since quota incentives are now likely to bring renewed pressure for budget and roster cuts at universities like Quinnipiac. Congratulations! [Inside Higher Ed, earlier here and here] […]