Title IX - changes to policy

Title IX is great in theory, but it's been horrible in execution. By and large, schools, instead oid adding opportunities for women have merely taken away opportunities for men. Men's sports have been and are being dropped left and right, and for us triathletes it should be disturbing. Swimming, track and cross country are usually first on the chopping block.

First, it's not just a scholarship issue.  There's no athletic scholarships at Ivy League schools, for example, but they have all cut out men's varsity sports to help reach "equitable" participation ratios.

Also, football (& to a lesser extent basketball) tends to be much more important than you'd imagine even if the "program" operates in the red.  Notice the number of alumni that come to attend football games.  Many of these alumni are important sources of "revenue" for the university.  You won't see that at a swim meet or wrestling match, etc.

I have mixed feelings on Title IX.  As a male athlete, I watched programs get sliced and saw friends lose out on opportunities while women's sports were far more populated by multi-sport athletes (so even though the "slots" were becoming more equitable, there were still far fewer women athletes than men).  But without opening those opportunities, I'm not sure that we would have had the "trickle-down" to younger girls taking up these sports.  Over time participation by women is clearly on the rise.  And that's a good thing.

Except how do you "right the wrongs" of previous generations?  This is the problem with any affirmative action type system.  The current majority "pays" for their predecessors past mistakes.  But absent that, it would take several generations (at a minimum) to "naturally" bring the minority to a level of reasonable equality.

I'm no expert on this stuff, but I've been part of enough discussions on it to believe there's no easy answer.  You basically have to accept there will be some "injustices" done in order to yield longer-term equality.  I do agree that at some point Title IX will have outlived its usefulness.  It would be nice to think we're there already, though I'm not so sure.

From what I have heard or read about this issue.

Men's sports have been eliminated because there have not been enough women interested in sports programs within the school.  It seems the ratio must be 1:1 or 1:1.5 at worst.  So because football has 85 players, and there is not womens sport that fields that many players it will result in an "advantage" to the men's programs.

Baseball - Softball, basketball - basketball, volleyball - volleyball.  But wrestling and hockey (most schools would offer womens hockey IF there were enough women willing to play, but there are not.) have no counter part in the womens area.  Schools rather than face the cost of legal battles they know they will lose, have eliminated the programs.

How is that "fair" to the people who want to play?  Even in the programs that women participate in the number of women playing is less than the number of men willing to play.  Why is that?

I agree the program needs addressed, to deal with the overall fairness of the implementation.

I agree with the fact that it is not "fair" to the men of today (or recent past).  But the fact is those women's sports are growing because opportunities opened up.  Unfortunately, you can't start a college women's hockey team and expect a bunch of players to show up when those women did not have any opportunities to play when they were girls.  I assure you, girls hockey is growing.  Title IX is part of the reason.

Hockey is just an example, but you need to have the opportunities to start to draw in the participants.  Chicken and the egg.

Sorry, ND is not an Ivy.

Yes, women's rowing has been a big beneficiary of Title IX.

Reason: Lots of slots (nearly unlimited as you can just keep adding boats to the roster) so it helps the ratio. Girls are being encouraged to row because it helps schools achieve their goals.

Edit: Not sure why it's "interesting" that a lot of men care about Title IX.  To date, it's probably had a bigger impact on most of us than on women in aggregate (though that gradually changes as girls are growing up with greater sports opportunities).