A couple of weeks ago investigators from OCR showed up at Adrian College to look into the gender equity complaints that have been filed against the college's athletic program.
Since then more details about the complaint's allegations that there has been different treatment of women's and men's coaches, access to facilities and equipment and, in general, greater attention to men's athletics have come out.
But the college's executive vice president* Rick Creehan, who has been the spokesperson on this issue, has said that the complaints have been over exaggerated.
For example, the fact that the new Multisport Performance Stadium does not even have a women's locker room let alone one with lounge furniture and a plasma television as the men's does was simply an "oversight" according to Creehan. They must have just forgotten that women play sports for the entire time the project was being planned and executed. Forgetting to order a chair for the ticket booth is an oversight; forgetting to build a women's locker room is discrimination.
Creehan attempted to diffuse that particular complaint by noting that the Merillat Sport & Fitness Center right next door has a women's locker room. Such a rationale only makes the absence of one in the new building all the more egregious. That a university could build, in the past, a facility that women could use but forgets that women may want--actually are required to have--access to the new facility is not earning points for the administration.
Also at issue are: updates planned to the baseball stadium that are more extensive than those planned for the softball complex; male athletes' greater access to athletic trainers; more publicity for men's sports.
No word on when OCR will issue its report.
* I know the American university is becoming progressively corporatized but an executive VP!?
Posts
