Wednesday, April 16, 2008

URI makes cuts

As anticipated, the University of Rhode Island has been forced to cut teams to compensate for a large university-wide budget deficit. In addition to women's gymnastics which had already been told this would its last season, the university's athletic department has said it will also be eliminating women's field hockey, men's tennis, and men's swimming and diving. Also women's lacrosse will not be elevated to varsity status as had been promised when gymnastics was cut earlier in the year. Title IX expert Janet Judge helped the university as it made its final decision regarding which programs would be cut. Before the cuts URI maintained substantial proportionality. And even with the elimination of gymnastics they were not going to be too far away from that, especially given the plan to elevate lacrosse. I didn't crunch any numbers myself but I assume that Judge did and that these cuts have been made in such a way as to maintain proportionality.