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Commission Divided on Changes to Title IX
A fifteen-member commission convened by the U.S. secretary of education, Rod Paige, to study Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 issued its final report, titled "Open to All": Title IX at Thirty, in February. Title IX prohibits institutions from barring students from any federally funded educational program or activity because of their sex, but its influence has been the greatest in the area of athletics. The law requires institutions to offer men and women equal opportunities to participate in athletics programs, and to distribute scholarship dollars equitably.
The commission, established last year, was charged with studying various aspects of Title IX but particularly its enforcement. Critics have argued that institutions, unable to find or fund an equal number of female athletes, achieve equal opportunity by reducing opportunities for male athletes rather than by increasing them for females.
The report contains twenty-three recommendations, but only fifteen were made unanimously; several others caused a deep rift on the commission. Two members refused to sign the commission's final report and issued a separate "minority report" in which they sharply criticized some commission recommendations. Julie Foudy, captain of the U.S. national women's soccer team, said at a news conference that she and Donna de Varona, an Olympic swimming gold medalist, issued the minority report because the official report was slanted in favor of critics of Title IX and "would substantially reduce the opportunities to which women and girls are entitled under current law." Another commissioner, Cary Groth, expressed concern that the thirteen remaining members of the commission were characterized as fully supporting the report when in fact they were not given an opportunity to vote on the final version, according to the NCAA News, a publication of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
The more controversial recommendations include allowing institutions to exclude from their counts players who join teams after enrolling at college, as opposed to being recruited; excluding nontraditional students such as those who attend college part time from the student body count; and permitting institutions to count slots on team rosters rather than actual players.
Paige announced that the education department will move forward only on the unanimous recommendations. Those include providing consistent guidelines on implementing the law, making it clear that achieving parity by cutting men's teams is frowned upon, and developing enforceable sanctions for institutions that do not comply with the law.
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