When you look into the history of Title IX, you go down a lot of rabbit holes! My last post, about a lawsuit filed by the San Diego State University women’s rowing team led me to a 42-year-old lawsuit that broke new ground for Title IX.
In the fall of 1977, Long Island teenager Rollin Haffer arrived on the campus of Temple University in Philadelphia, the first in her family to go to college. She was a badminton player who had gotten a tuition scholarship to play for Temple.
“I thought I had been handed the world,” Rollin said. “Then when I arrived at Temple, I heard what the guys were getting.”*
In the 1977-78 academic year, 42 percent of Temple’s athletes were women, but they received just 13 percent of the athletic budget. Even excluding the money spent on the football program, the men’s budget trumped the women’s by a ratio of 3.6 to 1.
Steak and hotel rooms
For Rollin’s team, there was often no place to practice and the nets and shuttlecocks were worn out. The team had to share its uniforms with the women’s tennis team.
The women were more than aware of the disparity. It came up at every opportunity.
“It seemed that no matter what the topic of the meeting was, it always ended up talking about why we’re only getting $6 for three meals when we go out, and the footballers get a steak dinner and a hotel stay overnight before home games,” Rollin said.**
Checking in with other female athletes, Rollin found the same disparities. The swimmers didn’t have enough sweatsuits to go around. The bowlers had to buy their own uniforms. Two years went by and in Rollin’s junior year (1979-80), the athletic budget gave $700,000 to the men and $188,000 to the women — $1 per female athlete for every $3.80 per male athlete.
The jig is up
By 1980, Rollin had had enough. She rallied the troops and filed a class action lawsuit. By doing so, she became the first college athlete to take her school to task for violating Title IX. She hadn’t gone off to college thinking she’d sue her school, but in the end, she felt she had no choice.
“To make a difference, you have to make a lot of noise,” Haffer said. “It’s in my genes. Once you see a mistake and want to correct it, go to all lengths. It’s part of my genetic makeup.”
The lawsuit asked for $1.8 million in restitution for lost scholarships, and the allocation of half the school’s athletic resources and opportunities to the women’s program.
The battle dragged on for eight years. Rollin graduated and became a physical education teacher, but still she persisted. Finally, in 1988, after three weeks in court, and before a judge could rule, Temple agreed to settle.
A landmark settlement
No damages were awarded in the settlement, but the college was required to beef up its women’s athletic program and expenditures. It agreed to add women’s teams, grant proportional scholarships, improve equipment, provide trainers and training facilities for women and equalize travel and meal expenses.
Not only that, but more importantly, the ruling held that Title IX applied to intercollegiate athletics programs regardless of whether they received direct financial aid. If the college itself received federal funds, it had to comply with Title IX. Temple stood to lose $19 million in federal funds if it didn’t meet Title IX standards.
Rollin saw the victory as more than about money and resources. It was more than about Temple. It was about providing equal opportunity for women across the board.
“The lawsuit really helped define Title IX,” Rollin said. “It wasn’t just scholarships. It wasn’t just uniforms.”
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* Marcia Chambers, “For Women, 25 Years of Title IX Has Not Leveled the Playing Field,” The Philadelphia Inquirer (June 16, 1997).
** “How a Title IX lawsuit against Temple changed the game,” The Square Food (June 18, 2022). This quote and the following two quotes come from this article.