Chronicle of Higher Education
February 17, 2009
By LIBBY SANDER
Supporters of Title IX say they hope that President Obama will step up enforcement of the federal gender-equity law and help college athletics departments comply with its requirements during a time of fiscal hardship.
Although the new president has not spoken substantively about Title IX since taking office last month, he gave signals on the campaign trail as to how he will approach the issue. Those comments were a welcome change of pace among gender-equity advocates, who say enforcement was in a holding pattern during the Bush administration.
Last year Mr. Obama singled out the federal agency responsible for enforcing Title IX, the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights, as ineffective in its efforts to police institutions under the law.
"Compliance reviews have dropped, the focus of the reviews has narrowed, and the agency has taken a lax approach to enforcement," Mr. Obama told USA Today.
He said he would devote more resources to the agency and, in the realm of athletics, called on high schools and colleges to be more "proactive" in complying with the law, which is part of the Education Amendments of 1972.
Advocates say they are eager to see an end to a "stalemate" on the issue under President George W. Bush, when Title IX enforcement slowed and the tenor of the political debate about the law grew ever more strained.
From 2002 to 2006, the Office for Civil Rights conducted just one compliance review, according to a study by the National Women's Law Center, an advocacy group. The office investigated 105 complaints alleging sex discrimination in college athletics, but "the impression remained that it should have taken a more proactive approach to enforcing Title IX," says Daniel A. Cohen, a lawyer in Atlanta who represents colleges and universities in Title IX cases.
Mr. Cohen says the Obama administration is also likely to revise, if not do away with, a 2005 "clarification" of Title IX that allows institutions to use an interest survey to show that they are in compliance. The measure failed to gain traction on campuses and never received the endorsement of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. But it was nonetheless viewed as a setback by gender-equity advocates, who felt that it weakened the intent of the law.
After that, the Bush administration was largely quiet on the issue — not making any more regulatory changes, but not offering any guidance, either.
And while advocates' hopes for Mr. Obama are speculative at best, whatever comes next, says Christine Grant, a longtime supporter of Title IX, "will be better than the last eight years, because I don't think it can be worse."
A New Chapter
For some longtime gender-equity advocates, the ebb and flow of political tides with each new administration has become a familiar if not always comforting cycle. This time, in part because the new president has two young daughters and speaks often — and fondly — of the role of sports in his own life, the feeling is positively chipper.
"I have been listening carefully to what President Obama has been saying, and he has been saying all the right things," Ms. Grant says. "This president gets it."
The enthusiasm is predictable, says Jeffrey H. Orleans, departing executive director of the Council of Ivy Group Presidents. "People who care about Title IX always feel more positive when there's a Democratic administration," says the former civil-rights lawyer, who was a principal author of the regulations for carrying out the landmark legislation.
Title IX bans sex discrimination at institutions that receive federal funds. Although it applies to many programs, it is best known for swelling the ranks of the nation's highschool and college sports teams with women.
The most widely used method of showing compliance with the law is to have the percentage of women playing sports be proportionate to a college's overall female student population. This method, known as proportionality, has been challenged by groups that advocate for men's sports, who argue that it forces colleges to fulfill "quota" requirements and cut men's teams in order to do so. Full Story: http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i24/24a02001.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
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