Title IX Has Bad Consequences

I want to agree with the those members of the Crimson Staff who wrote the dissent to the editorial on Title IX ("Demand Sets Funding," Apr. 21, 1995). They Correctly note that despite the good intentions of Title IX, the legislation is often used not to augment athletic opportunities for women, but rather to eliminate athletic opportunities for male athletes.

I have experienced this effect personally--I was a first year member of the University of Illinois Men's Swim team when it was eliminated for a combination of Title IX and budgetary reasons.

The elimination of my team was very painful and life altering for me. I would like to think that proponents of Title IX are not so heartless as to wish such and unpleasant experience upon me. Yet these types of experiences are what most often results from the application of Title IX to a collegiate athletic department.

I don't know where the solution to gender inequities lies. But I do know that it is not in a 50/50 split of money by gender. Such a system simply doesn't make sense. For instance, at any of our nation's military academies, women number far less than do men. To spend equal amounts of money on men's and women's athletics at such an institution is not logical. So perhaps spending money in equal proportions to the ratio of women to men in the student body is the solution. But that system ignores the fact that for most schools this means having at least 5 more women's sports than men's sports in order to "counterbalance" the budgetary drain of men's football. Of course, what that means in the reality of most schools is not that there will be a multitude of women's sports, but rather that there will be a decided lack of men's sports.

As I said above, I don't have an ideal solution to gender inequity in college athletics. But it is obvious to me that most people who offhandedly decide that collegiate women athletes aren't being treated fairly and that we need to rectify this situation by infusing much more money into women's athletics have not really looked into the issue deeply and so don't understand that there are very real and negative consequences that can be brought about by implementing such fairness. Joshua L. Adams '97