Mississippi State (and props to MSU student newspaper, The Reflector for covering Title IX in its sports pages twice in one week!) baseball coach, Ron Polk, thinks we need a Title X to protect men's sports. He is quick to give his support for women's athletics and Title IX but now he wants some sort of equal treatment that provides "protection against men's sports being cut." He believes proportionality is akin to quota filling.
There seems to be a little bit of two-sided mouth talking going on here. Additionally, because Title IX and its attendant regulations regarding compliance never mention, let alone advocate, cutting men's sports, Polk's desired "Title X"--to be compatible with Title IX, which Polk himself supports, remember--would have to make some provision for micromanaging athletic department budgets. Because as we have said repeatedly here, cuts are due to budget constraints.
Polk does bring up football--not in terms of budget but in how many spots the football roster fills in the overall count of athletes, noting that not many people realize that football takes up usually half of athletic opportunities for men. Many of us do realize this and have suggested that football trim its roster to allow other men's sports to offer more scholarships. This is a suggestion Polk himself does not make. I wonder how badly he really wants to protect men's baseball?
The article discusses JMU's fight to save sports in the wake of massive cuts and cites Jennifer Chapman, a female student-athlete who is leading the charge. I have some issues with what Chapman has been saying to the media about the situation at JMU and the Title IX blaming going on. But comment is right on track:
"Athletic departments have become a business run by accountants, not a place of opportunity run to educate students," she told The New York Times. "What are you saying to young boys involved in youth sports when you only offer six college sports for them?
"You're saying, 'You better play football or basketball, because if you run track or swim, you don't matter.'"
Exactly! And that has nothing to do with Title IX but everything to do with bad accounting and misplaced priorities.
And let's not forget that this message of "you don't matter" is exactly the one girls get when attempts to blame and weaken Title IX are made.
Showing posts with label Mississippi State. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mississippi State. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Monday, January 29, 2007
A little too much Title IX praise
The student newspaper at Mississippi State University recently published an article on the benefits of Title IX. Amidst all the backlash from the JMU cuts, "mandated" cheerleading, and male practice players, the article was a nice change. The author interviewed administrators, coaches, and female athletes, all of whom expressed their unequivocal support for the legislation. (I have some issues with how representative these sentiments are of the entire campus population.)
Unfortunately the women's athletic director, Ann Carr, in lauding Title IX conveyed some misinformation about the "benefits" to female coaches, administrators, trainers, and others in positions of leadership. Here is the excerpt from the article:
Carr, a former MSU athlete, sees the changes that Title IX has brought between the time she played sports and the time she joined the faculty. She also pointed out that when she was an athlete, almost all of the staff in the athletic department were male, but that has changed.
"Because of Title IX, there are more female coaches, female athletic counselors, female trainers and female athletic directors," Carr said. "There are even female managers in sports you would never expect to see them in. Women are now learning and wanting to be in those areas."
I don't know when Carr was an athlete or the specific situation at MSU, but I do know that post-Title IX the number of female coaches dropped significantly (but more than hlaf in some sports) as did the number of administrators when formerly separate men's and women's athletic departments merged pushing most of the women out of their leadership positions.
Carpenter and Acosta talk about this phenomenon in their work. And other scholars have discussed it as one of the little known and little discussed drawbacks to Title IX.
And a little searching uncovers that Carr is not the women's athletic director--a title that suggests women's and men's athletic departments are still separate--but rather she is an associate AD and, probably by virtue of her position as the highest-ranking female administrator, is in charge of women's athletics. She still answers to the head AD.
Unfortunately the women's athletic director, Ann Carr, in lauding Title IX conveyed some misinformation about the "benefits" to female coaches, administrators, trainers, and others in positions of leadership. Here is the excerpt from the article:
Carr, a former MSU athlete, sees the changes that Title IX has brought between the time she played sports and the time she joined the faculty. She also pointed out that when she was an athlete, almost all of the staff in the athletic department were male, but that has changed.
"Because of Title IX, there are more female coaches, female athletic counselors, female trainers and female athletic directors," Carr said. "There are even female managers in sports you would never expect to see them in. Women are now learning and wanting to be in those areas."
I don't know when Carr was an athlete or the specific situation at MSU, but I do know that post-Title IX the number of female coaches dropped significantly (but more than hlaf in some sports) as did the number of administrators when formerly separate men's and women's athletic departments merged pushing most of the women out of their leadership positions.
Carpenter and Acosta talk about this phenomenon in their work. And other scholars have discussed it as one of the little known and little discussed drawbacks to Title IX.
And a little searching uncovers that Carr is not the women's athletic director--a title that suggests women's and men's athletic departments are still separate--but rather she is an associate AD and, probably by virtue of her position as the highest-ranking female administrator, is in charge of women's athletics. She still answers to the head AD.
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