Trash Title IX

Nearly a year ago, the U.S. Department of Education relaxed its stringent adherence to Title IX.\nWhat exactly does that mean for us? Title IX is an amendment to the federal law passed in 1972 with the ultimate goal of "gender equality" in education. Part of it forces equal representation of the sexes in athletics. The new, relaxed interpretation states that representation of female athletic programs need only be proportional to female interest in them, which can be determined from surveys.\nI say relaxing this law is not enough: we need to trash Title IX altogether. It is archaic, unjust and detrimental to university fund raising.\nEstrogen-crazed feminazis might call this a misogynistic enforcement of the patriarchy (and no doubt look for a phallic symbol to offend them along the way), but the sane among us should only look at such a repeal as fair and rooted in common sense.\nHere's why: Each men's varsity sport must have a corresponding women's varsity sport, according to the old interpretation of Title IX. It defined equal representation among the sexes as having equal proportion in numbers without consideration of the types of sports each sex would prefer. With sports such as swimming, tennis, golf and even volleyball, Title IX is not truly an issue since their participants are about equally divided between men and women. Title IX runs into problems, though, with football and hockey, interest in which is overwhelmingly male.\nSchools must scramble to either find women's-only sports to balance the predominantly male ones, create the preposterous-sounding women's football teams or recruit women to their male teams. A few female kickers have appeared on college football teams, but aside from these incidents, Title IX still presents universities with a problem.\nThe elephant in the living room with respect to Title IX is this: Nobody really cares about female sports outside of the participants. I guarantee the vast majority of those reading this now have never attended or watched a female sporting event outside of tennis. Call it cultural bias or whatever, but sweaty, muscle-bound women grunting over a ball is not as much of a crowd-pleaser as men doing the same thing. And nothing is wrong with that.\nBecause of this popularity discrepancy, universities get short-changed. Men's sports are where the money is for any organization because their popularity attracts advertisers and vendors like flypaper. A female sport -- especially one for which there is no interest -- is a drain on the budget because it uses funds to essentially pay lip-service to Title IX and cuts out a potentially lucrative men's sport. \nThe IU Club Hockey team has been playing excellently in the recent finals -- it is ranked third overall -- but it is relegated to a club sport because absence of female interest in hockey means that Title IX precludes it as a university sport, according to www.IUhockey.org. This is an excellent potential source of lucrative advertisement (especially considering professional hockey's popularity), yet the University must suffer financially because of a Great Society law more than 30 years old.\nDo not confuse sex discrimination with common sense: A childish and inane notion that gender equality depends upon numbers is hampering universities' abilities to raise funds. Remember this at the next tuition hike.