Moor Vs. Moor: Is Title Nine Effective?
Yay: TIFFANY ALEMAN Staff Writer
Title IX protects people from discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive Federal financial assistance. Title IX states that: No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance. This essentially means that there should be as many girls sports teams as there are boys teams and that both should receive the same amount of money from regulated government funds.
Title IX benefits all students because it ensures funding must be used in a nondiscriminatory manner. A student’s gender cannot determine the amount of financial support the school provides to an athletic team.
Athletic programs at Alhambra give all students an equal opportunity to be involved in sports. The Title IX regulations are upheld here to ensure that all students are given the same athletic opportunities, regardless of sex.
Title IX’s reach stretches from the amount of supplies each team receives to the amount of time a team is allowed to practice on school property. Girls teams and boys teams must both have access to equal and adequate facilities. The main focus is not to punish one gender, but instead to ensure equal funding for all athletic programs.
Overall, Title IX is essential to regulating government funding because all students deserve to be treated equally. Without it, the high school athletic department system may side too much toward one side of the spectrum.
Nay: ALEC GREGORY Staff Writer
Since it’s passing in 1972, Title IX is supposed to ensure proportionality when it comes to boys and girls athletics. This means that if half of the student body is female then half of the student athletes should also be female. This is a good idea in theory and could be considered one of the crowning achievements of the Women’s Rights movement, helping make sure that countless girls and young women are given the same opportunities as their male counterparts.
However, the reality is not so simple. Instead of increasing chances for female athletes, colleges and high schools are often forced to make a difficult choice. They can either create more female programs, which can be costly, or they can save money and still meet title IX regulations by cutting more male programs. In order to save money the latter option is usually chosen.
The primary targets of these cuts have been hundreds of boys and mens’ wrestling programs, alongside dozens of tennis, track and field, swimming and gymnastics teams. There are now only 20 college men’s gymnastic teams left.
“Twenty-three years ago, there were 107 men’s gymnastic teams in this nation,” said Jason Lewis, a former gymnast out of Michigan State.
If Title IX is really designed to stop discrimination on the basis of sex, then most dance teams, which tend to be at least 80 percent female, should be cut.
Title IX forces school athletics officials to make concessions in a situation that they otherwise would have no part in. This decreases the effectiveness of an initiative designed to help and not hurt athletes.