" 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."

- NCAA Gender Equity Task Force, 1972

1. "Provide athletic opportunities to females and males substantially proportionate to their

respective enrollments; or"

2. "Consistently expand programs for the under-represented gender or"

3. "Show it 'fully and effectively' meets the interests of the gender that is under represented."

Although it has never been done, The Office of Civil Rights has the right to take away the federal funding of any school that fails to meet one of these requirements. The federal court also holds the right to charge schools for damages done to students if their programs do not fulfill the above requirements and demand financial repayment for any harm done. OCR can also force a school to change their programs if necessary.

In 1994 the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act was passed by Congress, requiring institutions of learning to submit a report of scholarships, participation numbers, expenditures, budgets and salaries. This act was one more way to check that colleges and high schools fulfilled the requirements under Title IX.

Also, a college must have a Title IX coordinator. There are specific guidelines for intercollegiate athletics to be followed under Title IX. The first area touches upon financial assistance for students and states that the total amounts of athletics aid must be proportionate to the ratio of male and female athletes. Also, the sports chosen and the level of competition they are played at must reflect the interests and abilities of the student body. This includes:

the opportunities for athletic participation of male and female students are proportionate to each gender's enrollment, when one gender is underrepresented the institution shows evidence of growth in programs accommodating the abilities and interests of that gender and, finally, if a gender is underrepresented at a college or university, and the school does not show evidence of program growth, it must show the abilities and interests of that gender have been provided for by a current program.

Lastly, treatment and opportunities do not have to necessarily be identical, rather equal. This includes the equity shown in equipment, scheduling for games and practices times, travel and per diem allowances, medicals and training facilities and services, recruitment of student athletes, and publicity, among many others.

THE PROTEST

At Yale University in the 1970s, the male and female's rowers may have been called a "team," but Chris Ernst and many others would have to disagree - they certainly were not a team. In a team, each and every member is treated equally, regardless of race, age, skill level, or gender. But in 1976, the female rowers at Yale were treated as anything but equal to the male rowers. They were "being asked to be athletes without dignity," with no access to facilities, less funding, and above all, unequal treatment. Each day in the bitter cold winter in Connecticut, after a grueling practice on the icy river, the women rowers would wait on the freezing bus while the men took hot showers in the boathouse. The women were not so lucky to have access to such facilities. The men had both bathroom and shower facilities at the river, as anyt university rowing team may expect. The women, on the other hand, sat wet and cold on the bus, waiting for the men to shower before they could ride back to campus. Maybe the men didn't realize that the women were being treated unfairly; maybe they just didn't care. But for whatever the reason, day after day the women would freeze on the bus, and many became sick - with chronic colds, flu, even pneumonia. Both groups were student atheletes, paying the same tuition at the same university, but they certainly were not treated as such.

While the women were freezing and catching colds on the bus, they decided to make use of their time. They began to talk about what to do about their unfair situation, and how to get people's attention about their issue. They knew that Yale University was not only treated them unfairly, but was also breaking a US law - Title IX. Part of this act stated that equal facilities must be available to men and women. The women thought of many ideas, and decided to hold a protest. They called a newsreporter from the New York Times to record the event. The plan was to go to the women's athletics director's (Johnny Barnett) office. 19 members of the Yale women's rowing team entered the office, stripped off their sweats to reveal "TITLE IX" written clearly across their backs and chests, and read this statement:

"There are the bodies that Yale is exploiting. On a day like today, the ice freezes on this skin. And we sit for a half hour, as the ice melts and soaks through to meet the sweat that is soaking us from the inside."

After the event, newspapers all over the country, and the world, were reporting the event - the New York Times, The Paris Tribune, the LA Times. The protest grabbed the attention of students, athletes, alumni, teachers, and administrators from Connecticut to California. Letters from alumni came pouring in."Within an hour," said the athletic director, "we had a problem on campus. And it had to addressed." After the event, the Yale administration could no longer afford to ignore the female athletes.Yale was embarrassed of this now public failure of complying to Title IX, a US federal law. After the protest, the women's crew facilities as well as women's athletics as a whole were significantly improved at Yale. But the event also had a ripple effect - it sent a smessage to the rest of the country, which has lasted over decades.

Opposing views of Title IX are based upon the fact that the goal of this amendment was to provide more athletic opportunities for females, however the effect has been that men's sports programs are being eliminated. Between 1992 and 1997, NCAA member schools have added more than 5,000 roster spots for female athletes but in order for these spots to be made, more that 20,000 lost spots for men. The elimination of men's sports programs has been brought on because of the ways colleges and universities must show that they are complying by the law. Most colleges chose to comply with the law by showing "proportionality". In other words, the number of athletes on all the college's teams would have to reflect the percentages of male/female students. In choosing to fulfill this compliance, a school has two choices: they can try to recruit more female athletes or they can reduce the number of male athletes. Many feel that if Title IX was working properly, man andwoman with ability and interest get equal chances to participate in sports; it shouldn't mean that for women to gain opportunities, men must lose opportunities. There is no mandate under Title IX that requires a college to eliminate men's teams to achieve compliance, the regulation is intended to expand opportunities for both men and women.

Benefits for Females Who Play Sports… - girls who play sports are: 50% less likely to develop breast cancer 80% less likely to have unwanted pregnancies 92% less likely to have drug problems - Athletes are more likely to report that they had never had sexual intercourse than non-athletes. Athletes: 54% Non-athletes: 41% - In college, women student-athletes graduate at a significantly higher rate than women students in general.Student athletes: 68% Students in general: 58% - One to three hours of exercise a week over a woman's reproductive lifetime may bring a 20-30% reduction in the risk of breast cancer, and four or more hours of exercise a week can reduce the risk almost 60% ("A Hero For Daisy")  (Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 1994) (1997 Division I NCAA Study on Graduation Rates) (Women's Sports Foundation Report: Sport and Teen Pregnancy, May 1998)

Is The Job Done? Gender Equity Today   - 90% of all television hours devoted to sports focus on men's sports - 90% of all journalists and broadcasters in the media are males - Males receive 50% in high school and 75% in college of athletic operating budgets and $179 million dollars more in college athletic scholarships each year - 84% of athletic directors of high schools are male - Women have less than 37% of all athletic participation opportunities, 36% of all scholarship dollars, 36% of sports budgets and 28% of recruiting budgets - At 80% of all NCAA member institutions, football does not pay for women's sports, or even itself   (http://www.womenssportsfoundation.org.cgibin/iowa/issues/rights/article.html?record=149)