U. of Delaware Faces Federal Inquiry Over Downgrade of 2 Men’s Teams

April 23, 2011, 1:21 pm

The U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights has opened an investigation into whether the University of Delaware’s decision in January to downgrade two men’s athletic teams—cross-country and track and field—from varsity status to club status violated a key federal gender-equity law, according to The News Journal, a newspaper in Wilmington, Del. Members of the teams complained to the department that the university’s move violated Title IX, a 1972 law that requires equal opportunity in sports and other areas at schools and colleges receiving federal funds. The law has typically been cited by women seeking to right gender imbalances, but it applies equally to men, the team members said. The university said it had downgraded the teams in order to further compliance with Title IX and to deal with a broader need to cut its athletics budget. A spokesman said the university would cooperate in the federal investigation.

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jffoster

What we need in the Sciences and in the pricklier parts of the Social Sciences is a Journal of Negative Results..
trendisnotdestiny

Neoliberal economic policy failures would overwhelm submissions, reviewers and editors
jffoster

Wont be about political negative results, trendisnot….,; it’ll be about genuine attempts to do genuine science and prickly social science that have negative results.
professor_e

This is a truly great idea. If there is a reading fee for each submission, it could supplement the editor’s income quite nicely.

Have a happy day!
deltaskelta

With this comment, I hereby apply for the editorial board. I know my application will be rejected, but I can at least say I attempted to become an Associate Editor at a journal with the highest rejection rate in academia.
http://twitter.com/TomRogersDE Tom Rogers

The Chronicle of High Education: U. of Delaware Faces Federal Inquiry over Track cut http://tinyurl.com/4yhf9o4 #UDtrack
tdr75

It’s about time there was some pushback on Title IX. While everyone understands the intent of the law, the practical effect has been to exclude men at many schools from participating in sports unless they are members of a few select sports (like football). The withering of sports like men’s volleyball, swimming, water polo, rowing, and gymnastics has been a direct result of Title IX.

It’s a badly-written statute that has had a serious negative impact on men’s participation in most sports. One can argue until you are blue in the face about institutional priorities, visibility, money, etc., but the net effect of title IX for men has been to diminish men’s participation in a wide range of sports.

Personally, I’d love to see statutes implemented that sharply limits scholarships to the “big” sports and creates a wider distribution of scholarship money. Division I-A football school are allowed 85 scholarships. I-AA are allowed 63. Last time I checked, there were 11 players on each side of the ball. 85 scholarships allows a team to put 4 times more players on scholarship than can start in a game. Ridiculous.

But I think the biggest strike against Title IX is that the NCAA mandates different numbers of scholarships for men and women in the same sports (2008-2009 data). Tennis? Women get 8, men get 4.5. Volleyball – Women get 12, men get 4.5. Rowing? Women get 20, men get 0 (not listed as an NCAA sport for men).

I am NOT disputing the benefits Title IX has brought to women in sports. by and large it has been a great story. But I think the negatives the law has brought to men’s sports put a serious anchor on those achievements. I wouldn’t dare to suggest that they cancel each other out…they do not. But in the quest for gender equity in post-secondary sports, the result has been a men’s sporting landscape that has become homogenized and highly limited.
nyhist

Title IX doesn’t have an impact on ‘minor’ men’s sports in and of itself. What has the negative impact is athletic directors’/university administrations’ decisions to privilege football above everything else. Although this was not what the previous commentator intended, he’s right that the huge number of scholarships and the large number of players (all male) involved in football overshadow everything else. If those were reduced there would be plenty of money for other sports for men, regardless of what is done for women.

Title IX has had an amazingly positive impact on female college athletes in this country. I love to watch the men and women, for example, cheering at the NCAA women’s basketball tournament games. Young people cannot imagine what it was like when there were hardly any intercollegiate competitions for women.
softshellcrab

When will this pc idiocy stop?