Title IX review panel, led by Leland, suggests tweaks but not overhaul

BY ANDREA M. HAMILTON

Women's basketball coach Tara VanDerveer says she wouldn't have a job, let alone a career, if not for Title IX. "When I was playing in school, our coach was a graduate assistant," she says. "There were no jobs for women coaches."

Title IX has been in the news lately in the wake of the creation of a federal commission last year to review the 30-year-old landmark law banning gender discrimination at institutions receiving federal funds. Co-chaired by Stanford Athletic Director Ted Leland, the panel recently concluded its six-month review and prepared to send its final report to the secretary of education at the end of this month amid bipolar criticism that its proposals either would gut the law or wouldn't change it enough.

From VanDerveer's perspective, the more power in the law the better. "You need the teeth in Title IX for all the little things that happen day-to-day -- sharing the gym, looking at the budget," she said. "It's already viewed as too strong by some people, but people in athletics are creative about getting around it."

Schools can demonstrate compliance with Title IX in one of three ways, of which the most commonly used -- and most controversial -- is the proportionality test. Under that standard, athletic opportunities must reflect campus enrollment: If the student body is 51 percent female, then 51 percent of sports teams' spots must go to women. Stanford has made excellent progress toward proportionality over the years: The student body is 49 percent female and 51 percent male, while athletics programs are 46 percent female and 54 percent male.

Critics across the country such as coaches of men's bench sports like wrestling and gymnastics, which they say have been dropped to balance the numbers, deride the proportionality standard as a quota.

Leland rolled his eyes at the word. "Mention the word quota and it's like dropping the A-bomb on the conversation," he said at a recent panel discussion on Title IX in Palo Alto sponsored by the American Association of University Women.

Leland said much of the contentiousness over Title IX comes from the fact that it is an unusual example of civil rights law because it requires schools to prove equal outcomes, rather than equal opportunity. "You have to go out there and count the bodies. We can't just say we have equal opportunity. That's one of the things the commission struggled with," he said.

The commission recommended clarifications in the rules governing how schools can comply with Title IX, as well as changes in how they count the number of athletes who participate. But the panel did not recommend any specific changes to the "three-prong test" for compliance that is the subject of much heated debate.

Personally, Leland said he felt the numbers approach was precisely what made Title IX effective. "I come out thinking that the fact we had a system of numbers really spurred people to move forward, instead of putting the burden on the student to prove they were discriminated against."

Much of the furor over Title IX has been the perception among some that gains in women's sports have come at the expense of men. Some schools have made headlines because they said they had to drop men's sports like wrestling or gymnastics to meet the proportionality requirement -- an approach that is permitted, if not exactly encouraged, as a way of complying with the law.

Leland said this could be misleading. "When a school drops a sport, it's more than just gender equity. There are other things going on," he said. During a four-year period in the mid-1980s when Title IX was not being enforced, he pointed out, wrestling programs nationwide continued to be dropped. "There has been a lot of discussion about why the government allows us to cut bench sports. The universities pushed back and said, 'Title IX isn't the only reason we do this,'" he added.

To those who think none of this would affect Stanford, a private institution, Leland has a quick answer.

"We get [federal] money, our students get federal loans, the hospital gets research grants -- all that stuff is in jeopardy," Leland pointed out. "The athletic department gets no federal funds -- none -- but we still have to comply."

Title IX compliance hasn't really been a sore point at Stanford, which -- unlike many large universities with big-time athletics programs -- has earned an admirable reputation over the years for its genuine promotion of women's sports.

Since Title IX, Stanford has added four sports and some 60 to 70 scholarships for women. "Few schools have been able to do that," said Assistant Athletic Director Gary Migdol.

Leland acknowledged that Stanford, as an affluent institution, has been shielded from the tough choices that Title IX has imposed on other schools. He noted that a speech he gave recently on the topic was titled, "Only the Rich Can Be Moral."

"I don't think there are many people right now who don't think equal opportunity for women is the right thing to do," Leland said. "Some schools struggle with it because they don't have the resources. It really is a matter of 'take a dollar away from this person, give it to that person,'" he said.

But in the current tight budget environment, no program or institution is immune. Leland said his department, like all others at Stanford, would have to cut back. One of the two women's sports that were to be added as a result of the latest compliance report in 1999 is on hold.

VanDerveer said she felt Stanford's proactive approach to building up women's sports over the years had indeed been driven by genuine interest in improving women's opportunities, but was aided by the fact that the university could afford to add programs. In the end, she said, it comes down to money.