Equity law under scrutiny

Title IX experts said recommendations made Thursday by President Bush's advisory commission could significantly weaken the federal law that determines gender equity at IU and other schools.\nThe Commission on Opportunity in Athletics' 15 members, which include three Big Ten officials, recommended only mild changes to Title IX, the education act that prohibits gender discrimination in federally-funded public and private schools, after mulling over earlier this week two dozen proposals.\nThe panel voted 7-7 on a proposal allowing schools to have 50 percent male and 50 percent female athletes, regardless of student body makeup, to comply with Title IX. A proposal to eliminate Title IX's "proportionality" requirement failed 11-4.\nThe commission, which met in Washington and only looked at sports, will send a report to U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige, who will consider changes. Only Congress can fundamentally change the law, but Paige can alter the way schools have to comply to it.\nIU staff said Title IX should be changed to allow more equal opportunities to all athletes. But the sources also expressed worry that the panel's recommendations could alter Title IX for the worse.\nFor example, the commission's vote about a 50-50 split of male and female athletes could be hurtful, said field hockey coach Amy Robertson, whose team was added so IU would comply with Title IX. She said that proposal could restrict female athletes at a school where more than 50 percent of the students are female. The proposal would have allowed schools to go 2 to 3 percentage points beyond that allowance.\nIU kinesiology professor Donetta Cothran said she considers all of the panel's proposals "scary."\nOn the high school and college levels, "we've never been in compliance, and yet we're going to weaken the law," Cothran said. "It doesn't make sense."\nIn a major decision, the panel struck down 11-4 a proposal to eliminate Title IX's "first prong," which requires universities to closely mirror the ratio of male and female athletics to the ratio of male and female students. \nThe panel also recommended not counting the number of overall athletes for compliance, but establishing a predetermined number of roster spots on each team. The panel also recommended to not count walk-on athletes and nontraditional athletes. \nIn addition, the commission voted 8-7 against proposing surveys to determine the interest in men's and women's sports for determining proportionality of genders.\nIU kinesiology professor Phillip Henson, a former Olympic track and field director, said he would like to see interest in individual sports taken into account when determining the number of male and female athletes. \nHe added that non-revenue, men's sports teams have been cut unfairly as schools try to comply with Title IX.\nAs for a solution to reaching proportionality, Henson said football players shouldn't be counted because no women's sport recruits as many players, tipping schools toward inequality.\nTitle IX requires federally-funded schools to meet one of three "prongs" -- the school's male-female athlete ratio to be "substantially proportionate" to its male-female student ratio, to show continuing increase in opportunities for women, or to show that it is "fully and effectively" accommodating women's interests and abilities.\nSince Title IX's inception, the number of women participating in college sports has increased fivefold from 1971 to 2002. But about 400 men's college teams were eliminated during the 1990s. \nTo comply with Title IX, IU added women's crew in 1997, water polo in 1998 and a field hockey team in 2000. \n"I was not that worried" about potential changes to the law, Robertson said. "No matter what the president does, it won't change much. IU has always been trying to do the right thing."\nThe Associated Press contributed to this story.