Contact: Christie Hobbs
Phone: (202) 419-1820
On the 33rd anniversary of Title IX, the Independent Women's Forum applauds efforts by the Department of Education to provide guidance for how colleges and universities can assess student's interest in participating in athletics to demonstrate that they are in compliance with Title IX.
"For too long, the only sure-fire way colleges and universities could demonstrate Title IX compliance was to show 'proportionality' -- that women accounted for the same portion of athletes as were enrolled in school," said Carrie Lukas, director of policy at the Independent Women's Forum. "This encouraged many schools to meet that quota by eliminating male athletes by cutting men's teams. Clearly this is not what Title IX intended."
On March 17, 2005, the Department of Education posted guidance detailing how schools can demonstrate that they were accommodating the interests of the underrepresented sex. They detailed how schools could use online surveys to assess student interest and provided explicit steps to ensure student response.
"Fulfilling student interest was always supposed to be one measure of Title IX compliance. All the Department of Education did was explain how schools can assess student interest," said Lukas.
Unfortunately the recent clarification of Title IX is coming under attack. Today, opponents of Title IX reform held a press conference to demonize the clarification as a threat to women athletes.
"Defenders of the existing Title IX regime have always claimed that Title IX wasn't supposed to be a quota system," Lukas continued. "Their criticism at the Department for creating a real alternative to the quota system seems misplaced. Or it reveals that it is the quota system that they have wanted all along."