The University of Rhode Island decided recently to cut women's gymnastics citing the decrease in the the sport's popularity in the region. At that time it promised to add women's lacrosse in 2009. But recent budget issues (every university department is being required to scale back)have made that addition nearly impossible and it seems like cutting other sports is under serious consideration.
University administrators are considering a variety of options, however, and note that cutting teams is not something they want to do but that eliminating $800,000 of the budget will be difficult without cuts even if they can come up with a plan to increase revenues. They have also said they will be consulting a Title IX expert regarding cuts.
But right now, even after cutting women's gymnastics, URI looks pretty safe. With or without gymnastics they are firmly within 5% proportionality.
Hopefully this will mean that when the decisions as to which teams to cut are made we won't be hearing a lot of "because of Title IX, URI has cut men's....." We shall see.
