Tag Archives: TitleIXat50

The Title IX 100

Last year at this time, I made a New Year’s resolution. I vowed to write about Title IX this entire year, the 50th anniversary of the gender equality law. And I kept my resolution! Here it is, one year and one hundred blog posts later. Yay me!

You can browse through the posts here at my website. In total, the 100 posts add up to around 70,000 words — about the length of a book!

I started last January simply, with the wording of Title IX. “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.”

Before I knew it, I was drawn into the drama of this law that I once knew nothing about. It has its humorous moments and its heartbreaking moments. It changed a centuries-old male-centric world while remaining relevant to the current day. In short, it was groundbreaking.

Words become deeds

Until you have the time to read my fractured 100-chapter book, today I’ll share with you in brief bullet points what I learned about the landmark 1972 law this year.

So, hold onto your seats. Here we go!

* It took the eagle eye of one woman — Bernice Sandler — to spot how an existing law could be turned into a gender equality law.

* We needed Title IX! The two authors of the law, Rep. Edith Green and Rep. Patsy Mink, had both been excluded from the education and jobs they wanted.

* Title IX was part of sweeping changes in the way Americans thought about women, their place in society and what they could accomplish.

* But a lot was happening in 1972, so the law passed with a whisper instead of a bang.

* At first, no one recognized the bill’s potential to revolutionize the sports world.

* But the athletic fields needed a revolution! Women were excluded there just as in educational programs.

* Once people did make the Title IX sports connection, men didn’t like it. They tried to take the teeth out of the law.

* Women got creative (and sometimes naked) to force entities to comply with the law.

* Title IX’s enemies weren’t always men. And its defenders weren’t always women.

* Most often, progress came — and still comes — through lawsuits.

* Almost all lawsuits are settled out of court. But one high-profile lawsuit might finally go the distance.

* Title IX claims some astonishing victories. Equal pay in some professional women’s sports is one of them.

* Title IX paved the way to the Olympics for women. In 1976, the first women’s basketball team went to the Olympics, and when women dominated team sports in the 1996 Olympics, it became known as the Title IX Olympics.

* It opened a path for athletic careers off the playing field, too. Coaching , broadcasting and sports management, to name just a few.

* Women found success in whatever field they chose because of their athletic experience.

* Title IX’s reach is constantly expanding. It addresses athletic scholarships, sexual harassment, age discrimination, gender issues, COVID-19, school lunches, fraternity hazing, even hair.

* The success stories stemming from Title IX are thrilling! The stories of women “firsts” are inspiring.

* But there’s still more work to be done. Title IX gets a failing grade in many realms. It’ll take a lot more work on our part to reach Title IX’s goal of parity.

It got personal

For me, personally, writing about Title IX taught me a lot about women’s history. I knew vaguely that women had always been discriminated against — I’d written a book about the woman suffrage movement — but I had no idea of the extent of society’s damning of women.

But to be more specific, I learned about my own ignorance of the pervasive societal view of women. So often, when I interviewed women for the blog, they shared instances of blatant discrimination. Privately, I was thinking that in my own life, I hadn’t suffered from similar dismissals of women’s personhood. But I had!

I grew up in a church ruled by men who silence women from public worship, tell them what to wear and box them in to child care and meal preparation. I chose the career of journalism, which was opening up to women in the newsroom but still excluding them from management positions. I specialized in financial journalism and felt the scorn of men who thought women were barely intelligent enough to balance a checkbook.

Even today, I hear men joking that women are airheads, bad drivers and shopaholics. I bank where the branch manager calls his employees “the girls.” I attend family gatherings where the women cook and clean up while the men watch TV and snore away on the sofa. My husband and I coach our son on how to negotiate his salary and benefits in the job market, which makes me realize that women rarely get this kind of mentorship.

It takes a village, they say. In reality, it takes a nation. And so the fight for gender equality will go on. Title IX is just a starting point.

Hair’s to Title IX

Is hair a Title IX issue? To cousins DeAndre Arnold and Kaden Bradford it was.

In January 2020, Barbers Hill High School in Mont Belvieu, Texas, suspended the two Black students for violating the district’s dress code. Their infraction was the length of their locs.* The district’s dress code required that male students not have hair extending below their eyebrows, earlobes or tee-shirt collar.

If the boys did not cut their hair, the school said, they wouldn’t be allowed back in class. When they didn’t comply, the two were placed on in-school suspension, which Kaden says was like prison. They were confined to a room and got no instruction from teachers, leaving them to complete their studies and homework on their own. They couldn’t participate in extra-curricular activities, a huge blow to Kaden, who was in the marching band.

In addition, the school said it would bar DeAndre, a senior, from his graduation ceremony, while Kaden, a sophomore, would be indefinitely on in-school suspension.

DeAndre and Kaden filed a lawsuit, claiming discrimination under Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The lawsuit pointed out that the district had no such rule for female students.

It’s cultural, too

For DeAndre, the case was about both gender and race. Locs are a part of his culture and heritage, he said, as his father is from Trinidad. Both DeAndre and Kaden said they tied up their hair to comply with the dress code.

“I really wish the school would kind of be open to other cultures and just at least let us try to tell you some things,” he said. “Don’t just shut us out.”**

But the district doubled down in 2020, adding the phrase “when let down,” to the hair length policy, meaning that the boys’ hair didn’t comply even if they tied it up.

The district maintains that it can legally enforce a gender-specific dress code, and that the hair requirement for male students is just to ensure a neat appearance and doesn’t bar any particular style.

“There is no dress code policy that prohibits any cornrow or any other method of wearing of the hair,” the district’s superintendent, Greg Poole, said. “Our policy limits the length.”***

Poole even placed the dispute in the context of the civil rights movement, claiming that exempting Black students would enforce unequal treatment of Black and white students. (The district is 97 percent white, and 3 percent Black, Hispanic or other.)

Photo tell-all

But Christina Beeler, an attorney interested in the case, leafed through old Barbers Hill yearbooks and came up with photos of white students with long hair.

“White male students aren’t being held to same standard,” Beeler said. “It’s so clear that white male students and Black students are being treated differently.”†

No matter what the district says, to suspend students because of their hair is ridiculous, DeAndre’s mother said.

“It’s just hair, it’s not going to define how well they are going to do in school or how their behavior will be,” said Sandy Arnold.†† In the lawsuit, she also claimed gender discrimination, saying she was harassed after contesting the dress code.

Still with the hair!

The U.S. District Court in Houston eventually barred Barbers Hill from enforcing the hair length policy. Yet on the first day of school in 2021, the district tagged 36 high school students for hair length violations. Twenty-two of the students were white, 12 Hispanic and two “other.”

Meanwhile both DeAndre and Kaden left Barbers Hill to attend Ross S. Sterling High School in Goose Creek, Idaho. Kaden is finishing high school back at Barbers Hill, while DeAndre is at college studying to be a veterinarian. He got help with his tuition from Ellen DeGeneres and Alicia Keys, who presented him with a $20,000 check on DeGeneres’s show.

Despite the emotional and educational toll the lawsuit took on the cousins, Kaden says he’s just glad they could make a difference.

“Our main goal has always been to change the policy to where it wouldn’t discriminate against different racial groups,” he said.†††

_____________________________

* The lawsuit uses the term “locs” instead of “dreadlocks,” noting that slave traders used the term “dreadlocks,” meaning “dreadful,” to refer to Africans’ hair.

** Associated Press, “Ellen DeGeneres surprises Texas teen told to cut dreadlocks with $20K for college,” The New York Post (January 31, 2020).

*** “Ellen DeGeneres.”

† Raga Justin, “Texas school district’s dreadlocks ban discriminatory, federal court rules,” The Texas Tribune (August 18,2020).

†† Tiffany Justice, “Barbers Hill ISD facing backlash once more about controversial dress code policy,” Fox News (August 25, 2021)

††† “After 2 Black students were suspended, court rules hair policy is discriminatory,” ABC13 (August 18, 2020).

PHOTO: DeAndre Arnold (l) and Kaden Bradford (r)

Lawsuits spread like a virus

In my last post, you met Sage Ohlensehlen, a swimmer for the University of Iowa who brought a lawsuit against the school after it cut four sports teams, including the women’s swim/dive team, claiming hardship from COVID-19.

As it turns out, the UI lawsuit is only one of many that female athletes have brought against their universities for the same reason.

“Under the cover of COVID, folks are trying to drop women’s sports,” charges Donna Lopiano, president and founder of Sports Management Resources.*

Here are just a few universities whose purported COVID-19 cuts female athletes have challenged, along with the resolution:

Stanford — reversed its decision to cut men’s and women’s fencing, field hockey, lightweight rowing, men’s rowing, coed and women’s sailing, squash, synchronized swimming, men’s volleyball and wrestling. Athletes on the five women’s teams challenged the cuts based on Title IX.

Brown — reinstated women’s fencing and equestrian in settling a Title IX lawsuit.

Dartmouth — reinstated men’s and women’s swimming and diving and golf, and men’s lightweight rowing after the school received a letter from the women’s lawyer threatening a Title IX lawsuit.

William and Mary — reinstated women’s varsity gymnastics, swimming and volleyball after student athletes threatened a Title IX suit.

East Carolina State University — reinstated women’s swimming, diving and tennis in settling a Title IX lawsuit.

Michigan State — last month, the Supreme court refused to hear MSU’s appeal of a lower-court ruling in favor of the women’s swim/dive team that had been cut due to COVID-19 (the university claimed). The lawsuit can now proceed.

An athlete’s view

Lopiano — as well as many others — believe athletic directors are using the virus as a cover for cutting programs so they can increase the budgets of the juggernaut men’s programs like football and basketball.

“The problem is that at the same time they’re pleading poor, they’re spending up the wazoo to protect their one or two revenue-producing sports,” Lopiano says. “That’s the mentality of the athletic directors. They are not treating it as educational sports, but as a business.”

Lopiano isn’t an ivory tower theorist. She knows the athletic world from experience. She is a six-time National Champion, nine-time All-American, and three-time Softball MVP. She is a member of thirteen halls of fame.

For ten years, she played for the Connecticut Brakettes, a national championship women’s softball team. As a pitcher, she compiled a career record of 183–18. She finished her Brakettes career in the top ten of several categories including hits, RBIs, runs and home runs.

Overall, she participated in 26 national championships in four sports and was a nine-time All-American at four different positions in softball.

Following her athletic career, Lopiano became an assistant athletic director at Brooklyn College, where she also coached basketball, volleyball and softball. In 1975, she became the first director of women’s athletics at the University of Texas, where she worked for seventeen years.

Early on at the University of Texas, though, Lopiano thought she might be fired. She testified against a proposed amendment to Title IX — the Tower Amendment — that would have exempted the powerhouse men’s programs from Title IX regulations. The amendment failed to pass and Lopiano kept her job.

No need to cut teams

Lopiano says there are many ways for schools to cut athletic costs. For example, instead of cutting teams, they can cut expenses across the board.

“Any athletic director worth their oats knows that they don’t have to cut any sports in order to keep their athletic program intact,” she says.

“There is a lot of mythology here — 98.4 percent of all athletic programs are losing money and they are getting subsidized,” Lopiano says. “And it isn’t institutional money, rather it is student tuition dollars and mandatory athletics fees. There is no leadership in higher education that is saying ‘stop this madness’ in terms of expenditures in sports programs.”**

Maybe a few more lawsuits will do the trick.

_____________________

* Carrie N. Baker, “Athletes Win First Round in Title IX Challenge To Cuts To Women’s Sports,” Ms. (January 1, 2021). This quote and the next two come from this article.

** Dom Amore, “As Title IX turns 50, visionary Donna Lopiano still sees much left unfinished in gender equity in sports,” The Hartford Courant (June 21, 2022).

PHOTO: Lisa Helfert/Knight Commission

Title IX meets COVID-19

What do Title IX and COVID-19 have in common? A lawsuit!

In December 2020, the University of Iowa announced it would cut its men’s and women’s swimming and diving, men’s tennis and men’s gymnastics programs starting with the next school year, claiming the hardship of the virus. The women were devastated.

“When Iowa cut the swim and dive team, that was the worst moment of my life,” said Sage Ohlensehlen, the women’s swim team captain.*

Team member Alexa Puccini agreed. She recalls the meeting at which the women heard the news.

“The coaches were lined up against the wall. The athletes, socially distanced, sat in chairs. Athletic director Gary Barta delivered the stunning news and left,” she said.

“It was very, very emotional. I just couldn’t believe it,” Alexa said. “It was such an awful experience.”**

A widening gap

Something about the cuts didn’t sound right to the women. This was a Title IX issue, not a Covid issue, they decided. Sage, Alexa and two other swimmers brought a Title IX lawsuit.

In the lawsuit, the women charged that UI didn’t have enough athletic opportunities for women even before Covid, and cutting their team created an even greater disparity. Women make up 53.56 percent of the student body, the lawsuit stated, but in the pre-Covid 2018-19 academic year only 50.77 percent of athletic opportunities were for women.

In the 2018-19 year, the lawsuit continued, the university committed $6.7 million to men’s athletic programs and $6.4 million to women’s athletic programs. That’s a ratio of 51 percent to 49 percent in favor of the men. Close but no cigar!

The lawsuit goes on to say that the gap in the number of male to female athletes stood at 47 athletes in the 2018-19 school year, a gap that grew to 92 athletes for the 2019-20 school year, and, with the cuts, an expected gap of 141 athletes.

Further, the women charged, the university failed to meet any of the criteria for Title IX compliance, including financial assistance, equipment and supplies, tutoring, locker rooms, practice and competitive facilities, housing and dining and recruitment.

Gains and losses

For its part, the university said the cuts were necessary to compensate for the $75 million drop in revenue caused by lost ticket sales and other revenue because of COVID-19.

“In 2019, the Office for Civil Rights closed its investigation with no findings of any violation in the thirteen categories of Title IX. The university remains committed to staying in compliance with Title IX.

“In fact, impact on gender equity and Title IX compliance was one of the factors used to determine which sports to eliminate due to the fiscal financial crisis created by COVID-19,” the university said.***

The damage is done

Even so, the University of Iowa eventually settled the lawsuit. In February 2021, it reinstated the women’s swim and dive team and created a women’s wrestling program.

But because of the uncertainty of whether they’d be able to swim, many of the women had already made plans to transfer to other universities. Alexa Puccini, for example, is finishing her collegiate career at the University of Arizona. The lawsuit came in Sage Ohlensehl’s senior year, so she reaped no benefit from the decision, but she is currently studying law at Southern Methodist University Law School.

“The lawsuit literally led to me moving fourteen hours away because I wanted to be someplace where I wasn’t known as the girl who sued Iowa,” she said. “I lost a lot of friends, and I had relatives say rude things to me.”†

Her senior year was heartbreaking, she said, but she’s certain she and her teammates made a difference for other women.

“Because of our efforts , 70 MORE WOMEN will have the opportunity to compete as a division one athlete at the University of Iowa (35 swimmers/divers and 35 wrestlers). This result makes the hell that I’ve been through worth it,” Sage said on social media.

“I’m so happy that Iowa is taking these steps for equality,” she said,†† “and I’m hoping that this case will set a precedent for all other schools.”

_____________________

* Chloe Peterson , “Ohlensehlen, UI reach settlement in Title IX lawsuit,” The Daily Iowan (September 23, 2021).

** Erica Hunzinger, “Hawkeye swimmers wondered if Title IX suit was ‘going to work’,” AP (June 15, 2022).

*** Daniel Perreault, “Judge temporarily stops University of Iowa from cutting Women’s Swimming and Diving,” KWWL (December 3, 2020).

† “Ohlensehlen, UI reach settlement” and “Judge temporarily stops.”

†† Ohlensehlen, UI reach settlement.”

PHOTO: Sage Ohlensehlen (left) with unidentified teammate. I’m working on it!

“We do not accept girls”

Susan Kaplowitz grew up in the Bronx in the 1950s and ‘60s. But her baseball loyalty didn’t lie with the Bronx Bombers. Instead, her grandmother turned her into a Brooklyn Dodgers fan.

When she was 10 years old, Susan learned that before each Dodgers game, a child was chosen to play catch with a player.

“I said to my Grandma and Dad, ‘Wow, I want to do that!’ she recalled. “So they sent in my application.”*

A form letter came back.

“We do not accept girls.”

“I was heartbroken,” Susan recalled. “I thought, ‘Why can’t I?’ But the idea of equality, or fighting for equality, wasn’t on our radar yet.”

Cleanliness before competition

Susan loved sports of all kinds. But she had few opportunities to play. Girls had no recreational teams or school teams. Gym classes were separated by sex, and while the boys had a full array of sports, in the younger grades, girls classes were mainly exercise, jumping rope and marching. She says they were graded on the cleanliness and color of their sneakers and gym uniforms!

In high school, Susan finally got to play sports in gym class. In addition, the school had play days for girls. We’ve talked about “play days” before — after-school inter-scholastic events for girls. The teams were mixed between the schools and afterward the girls were made to socialize with each other. The structure of play days discouraged competition, which was thought to be unfeminine and detrimental to women’s health.

Most women I’ve talked to remember play days scornfully, but Susan welcomed them.

“I finally got to meet girls who were interested in sports,” she recalled. “We’d take buses to each other’s homes to play tennis or whatnot. It had a positive impact on me.”

When she could, Susan played with her father, a male cousin, and her brother, although he wasn’t that interested in sports. She would play anything — basketball, baseball, tennis, touch football.

But again, when she’d walk around her neighborhood and see boys playing Little League, she’d think, “Why can’t I do this?”

In the summer, Susan’s family would go to the Catskills. It was there at the Windsor Hotel that she finally got to play on a team. She practiced with the hotel’s summer softball team every day. At 11-years-old, she was five-foot-ten and strong. Everyone agreed, “She can play if she wants to play!”

Playing, kind of

The first time Susan got to play for her school was in 1962 at Hunter College, where she was on the women’s basketball, softball, tennis and field hockey teams. She was ecstatic to finally play! But the inequities weren’t erased. The women’s basketball team, for example, had to practice at 7:30 a.m., while the men got the gym in the more reasonable afternoon hours.

And although she got to play basketball, the game was ultimately unsatisfying. The college played the ancient “girls” game that had been started by Smith College’s Senda Berenson in 1892. The rules were intended to prevent “nervous exhaustion” from a game that was too strenuous for girls.

In this game, the team had just six players, and the court was divided into three sections. Players couldn’t leave their section. They couldn’t dribble more than three times before passing or shooting the ball, and they couldn’t hold the ball for more than three seconds. Guarding was forbidden and falling down was a foul. Players couldn’t grab the ball from another player.

Susan chafed under the rules.

“I loved to shoot and I couldn’t shoot!” she said. “The coach looked at my height and put me on defense, where all you did was rebound.”

Women have to make do

At Hunter, the women’s softball field was poorly maintained, while the men’s baseball team had an immaculate field. The men had varsity locker rooms, while the women used the gym class lockers. The women’s uniforms were hand-me-downs while the men’s teams had new uniforms every year. The women traveled to away games on old school buses while the men went on chartered buses.

Most disappointing of all was that women did not have athletic scholarships. Because of that, college was out of reach financially for many women. Fortunately, Hunter College was doable for Susan’s family. Hunter didn’t even charge tuition until 1963.

In my next blog post, Susan talks about how she made a life in sports with the little opportunity and encouragement she was given.

_________________

* All quotes come from my interview with Susan on November 21, 2022.

PHOTO: Susan Kaplowitz with students from Rutgers University. I’ll explain later!

A walk-on wonder

It’s almost December, that dreary time between the World Series and spring training, and I’m so happy to have a baseball story for you!

Last week, Olivia Pichardo made college baseball history. The 18-year-old freshman at Brown University became the first female athlete in NCAA Division 1 history to be named to a varsity baseball roster.

Here’s how she describes finding out that she’d made the team.

“It was definitely a surreal moment for me because it’s something that I’ve wanted since eighth grade,” she said. “It’s kind of crazy to know that I’m living out my dream right now and my ideal college experience that I’ve always wanted.”*

Softball? Nope!

Olivia grew up in Queens, New York, and has been playing baseball since she was 5 years old. Her father, Max, had played street and sandlot ball in the Dominican Republic, and was equally in love with the game. He teamed up with his daughter to make her goal a reality.

She played varsity ball for Garden School in Queens and travel baseball on Long Island. She played club ball for the New York Crush and Next Level Baseball and made the Olympic Women’s National Baseball Team. She went on to intern in the New York Mets’ amateur scouting department.

Over the years, coaches and mentors pressured her to play softball, where she would undoubtedly succeed and have a secure athletic future. But Olivia pushed back.

“Each year, I would be told that the game I love would leave me behind,” Olivia said. “I just kept playing and working harder.”**

Olivia was determined to play baseball, even if it wasn’t at the D1 level. She had several offers to play college ball, but Olivia chose Brown, having no guarantee of playing. She participated in a walk-on tryout followed by an intense assessment process. Head coach Grant Achilles was impressed with her athleticism, versatility and strength as a middle infielder, outfielder and pitcher.

“Olivia put together the most complete walk-on tryout I have seen from a player since becoming a head coach,” said Achilles.***

Team spirit

Olivia’s teammates have been equally as supportive. When Achilles introduced her to the team, they gave her a round of applause.

“I’m getting an overwhelming amount of support and it definitely feels very good to feel supported like this,” she said.†

Baseball For All, an organization that advocates for girls and women in baseball, keeps a list of colleges and universities that consider talented players, regardless of gender. Eight women, including Olivia, are on varsity college baseball rosters for the spring of 2023. That makes Olivia happy.

“I’m just really glad that we’re having more and more female baseball players at the collegiate level. No matter what division, it’s just really good to see this progression,” she said.†† “It’s paving the way for other girls in the next generation to also have these goals that they want to achieve and dream big and know that they can do it.”

_________________

* “At Brown, Olivia Pichardo makes history as first woman on an NCAA Division I varsity baseball team,” Brown University press release (November 21, 2022). Read about other female baseball firsts here.

** https://oliviabaseball.com

*** “At Brown.”

† Julian McWilliams, “A lofty plan by a dad and his daughter 14 years ago produced Brown’s Olivia Pichardo, the first woman on a Division 1 baseball roster,” The Boston Globe (November 22, 2022).

†† “A lofty plan.”

Hurdles, what hurdles?

Title IX’s impact on college campuses is well known, but what about life afterward? You only need to look at the life of Benita Fitzgerald Mosley to see that opportunity and success doesn’t stop at the college level.

Benita was born in 1961, making her 11 years old when Title IX was enacted. Growing up in Dale City, Virginia, her talent in track surfaced early. She says she never experienced any discrimination in her athletic pursuits. As a standout hurdler, she won three state 110-yard hurdle titles.

After graduating high school, she attended the University of Tennessee on a full athletic scholarship, a school renowned for its track and field program. At UT, she was a 14-time All-American and won four NCAA titles, including three 100-meter outdoor hurdles championships.

She made her first Olympic team at the age of 18. Unfortunately, the United States boycotted the 1980 Olympics held in Russia that year. But at the 1984 Summer Olympics, she won Olympic gold in the 100-meter hurdles. She was only the second American woman (after Babe Didrikson) and the first African-American woman to win gold in that event. She was also an alternate for the 1988 Olympic team.

A Title IX success

Off the field, Benita earned her bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering. She is fully aware that her athletic and academic successes stem from Title IX.

“[The law] was instrumental in allowing me, as a real fresh Title IX baby at 11, 12 years old, to have all these opportunities that led to a college scholarship and an Olympic gold medal and (being a) 14-time all American,” Mosley said. “It’s unbelievable to think how different my life would have been, if not for that law.”*

A family tradition

Benita was born into a family that had already made its mark. In 1964, Benita’s mother, Fannie W. Fitzgerald, was one of four African American teachers to integrate the public schools in the Prince William County, Virginia, school district.

Virginia had vigorously fought school integration after the Supreme Court ruled in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that segregation was unconstitutional. Rather than integrate, some counties closed their public schools, and white families opened private white-only schools. Other white families fled the cities for the suburbs.

Benita attended Gar-Field High School, a pioneer in the successful integration of Virginia public schools. A girl named Joyce Russell Terrell, daughter of the president of the local chapter of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), was the first African American student to attend the high school. She started there in 1961, under police protection, the year Benita was born.

Benita is proud of the legacy of the women who led the way for racial equality.

“They all represent many unsung heroes who have quietly enacted change behind the scenes — not calling a lot of attention to themselves, just quietly doing the right thing,” Benita said.**

A grateful beneficiary

Today, Benita is the director of all U.S. Olympic training centers, president of the Women’s Sports Foundation and CEO of Laureus Sport for Good Foundation USA. She is a board member for the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum. In addition, she is vice president of LeagueApps, a technology platform for youth sports organizers that aims to create positive youth sports cultures.

Widening out Title IX’s reach, Benita credits the gender equality law with her ability to fashion a post-college career in sports marketing and administration that includes these leadership positions.

“Women didn’t have the opportunity to pursue degrees in law, medicine, engineering. Women didn’t have the opportunity to be sports executives,” Mosley said.*** “I’ve had opportunities throughout my career that were only made possible because of Title IX, and I’m forever grateful.”

__________________

* Cora Hill, “Title IX pioneers: Benita Fitzgerald Mosley turned women’s opportunities to Olympic gold,” Knoxville News Sentinel (June 20, 2022).

** “Historical Marker Unveiled for the Courageous Four,” Prince William County Communications Office (September 13, 2022).

*** “Title IX pioneers.”

Can Title IX curb hazing?

In a lawsuit wending its way through the courts, a college student’s grieving parents are testing Title IX as it applies to hazing deaths on college campuses.

In 2017, Max Gruver entered Louisiana State University, declaring a communications major. The 18-year-old from Roswell, Georgia, wanted to be a sports journalist. He had published almost 400 sports articles while in high school.

Max decided to rush Phi Delta Theta. It was a small fraternity Max thought might give him the opportunity to move into a leadership role.

Alcohol-fueled night

On the night of September 13, 2017, Max participated in a hazing ritual called “Bible study.” In this ritual, pledges must chug 190-proof liquor for giving wrong answers to questions about the fraternity or incorrectly reciting the Greek alphabet. Max died the next morning from alcohol poisoning.

At the time of Max’s death, he had a 0.495 percent blood alcohol level. That’s more than six times the legal limit in Louisiana. He also had THC in his system, a chemical found in marijuana.

The Gruvers filed a lawsuit in 2018 against LSU, Phi Delta Theta and several members of the fraternity, seeking $25 million in damages.

Gender bias in reverse

Here’s where Title IX comes in. The suit claimed that LSU discriminates against men by policing sorority hazing more strictly than fraternity hazing. Specifically, the suit claimed that LSU imposed greater sanctions on sororities than those imposed on fraternities, even though the women’s rituals are non-life-threatening.

Max’s parents claim that fraternities’ practice of hazing is based on outdated stereotypes of men, exposing them to a greater risk of hazing death. They point out that the school distributes glossy brochures promoting the benefits of Greek life without mentioning any risks.

The fraternity and five fraternity members settled with the Gruvers. One fraternity member, Matthew Naquin, was convicted of negligent homicide and sentenced to five years in jail. Witnesses testified at Naquin’s trial that he didn’t like Max, wanted him cut from the fraternity and played a central role in the hazing. He went to jail in January 2020. But 2.5 years of his sentence were suspended, and due to good behavior, he was released in April 2020, after less than three months in jail.

Phi Delta Theta has been banned from LSU’s campus until at least 2033, but the university is a holdout. It pressed a countersuit up the legal chain, but an appeals court ruled that because the university accepts federal funding, it isn’t immune from hazing lawsuits. And in December 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected LSU’s request to hear arguments.

“This ruling means that a school can face liability for violating Title IX if it disregards or minimizes reports of Greek male hazing,” said Jon Fazzola, an attorney for the family. “In doing so, it creates a greater risk of danger for males compared to females in Greek life.”*

Stopping the rituals

A trial has not yet been scheduled. But in 2018, Louisiana’s governor signed into law the Max Gruver Act and other anti-hazing bills.

The Gruvers created a foundation in Max’s name and are working to stop murderous hazing rituals. Since 1838, they say, more than 200 American university students have died from hazing. Max was one of four young men to die from fraternity hazing in 2017 alone.

“We don’t want to live in what happened to Max at the end, but at the same time, we want to change things for other young kids,” his parents have said. We don’t want this happening to another family.”**

I hope the Gruver family is successful in its pursuit. I remember clearly the death of Timothy Piazza that same year, a Penn State student who died from alcohol-fueled fraternity hazing. Whether redress comes through Title IX or some other path, we all want to know that we can safely send our students to college.

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* Betsy Butler, “What This Title IX Case about Hazing Means for Women on Campus,” Ms. Magazine (August 19, 2019).

** Natalie Anderson, “The Hazing Edition: Remembering Max Gruver,” the LSU Reveille (September 11, 2018).

Title IX gets failing grade

Earlier this year, the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism teamed up with the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland to assess the level of Title IX compliance at the high school level when it comes to sports.

Their four-month study raises concern for the 3.4 million high school girls playing sports in the 23,882 public high schools across the United States.* This is what they found:

It’s mostly up to teens and their parents to report violations of the law. State and federal governments don’t actively police Title IX.
But students and their parents don’t know much about the law. Many don’t even know it exists! Schools aren’t required to offer education about Title IX and sports.
Reporting Title IX violations can have grave consequences for teens and their parents. It means standing up to coaches, teachers and principals who have a lot of power over a student’s academic and athletic life.
Seeking Title IX relief is cumbersome and plays out over a long period of time. The study showed that, on average, two years elapses between reporting a violation and getting to a resolution. Girls who suffer unequal treatment often graduate before they see results.

What’s really sad is that girls — and even parents — are conditioned to accept unequal treatment.

“Most of these athletes just presume that there must be a reason that they’re getting second-class treatment,” said three-time Olympic gold medalist Nancy Hogshead-Makar of the Women’s Sports Policy Working Group. “It’s everywhere they look. They see that men are getting more than women everywhere. In high school, in junior high school, in college, men are getting more.”

Access doesn’t equal equality

There’s no question that girls’ participation has increased exponentially since Title IX was enacted in 1972. That year, just 1 in 27 girls participated in high school sports, according to the Women’s Sports Foundation. Today, about two in five do.**

But that doesn’t mean that treatment of female athletes has advanced at the same rate. In many cases, girls might still have less-equipped locker rooms, or no locker rooms at all. Their uniforms might not be as nice as the boys uniforms. They might play on neglected and dangerous fields, if they have their own fields at all. Their coaches might not be as experienced as the boys coaches, and their practice times might be scheduled around the prime time the boys get. They might get less publicity in their school’s athletics reporting.

Why the silence?

So why don’t more people speak out? I don’t know about you, but I remember my son’s high school baseball years. If you saw something you thought was wrong — like the coach’s son getting more playing time than anyone else’s son! — you didn’t want to say anything, because you didn’t want to jeopardize any chance your child did have of playing.

Plus, the high school years are stressful enough for parents, without adding in a Title IX dispute, and possibly a lawsuit. That’s what a group of parents found when they brought a lawsuit against the Stillwater, Oklahoma, school district for the unequal treatment of their softball-playing daughters.***

“It’s been quite an emotional toll. I think we’ve all lost sleep over it,” said Angela Morgan, a plaintiff in the case.

Step up to the plate

So, here we are, beginning the next 50 years of Title IX, and in many ways, girls are no better off than they were.

“We still estimate that the majority of schools are likely out of compliance with the law,” said Sarah Axelson, vice president of advocacy at the Women’s Sports Foundation.

Let’s hope that going forward, more brave families are willing to step forward to erase the continuing disparities female athletes face in their high school years. More importantly, let’s hope that state and federal entities step up their enforcement efforts.

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* Jacob Richman and Alexandra Gopin, “Title IX at 50: Girls are still fighting for equality in high school sports,” Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism and the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland (April 22, 2022). All quotes in this post come from the press release reporting the results of the survey.

** “50 years of Title IX: We’re Not Done Yet” (May 2022)

*** The lawsuit was settled in September 2021. Details are provided in Michelle Charles, “Stillwater superintendent meets with softball parents after Title IX suit settled,” Stillwater News Press (September 8, 2021).

Tragedy at the Title IX Olympics

The 1996 Olympics have come to be known as the “Title IX Olympics.” The 1972 gender equality law created a path to the Olympics for women, but it took another generation before the impact of the legislation hit. The first wave of expertly trained female athletes burst onto the scene at the 1996 Atlanta Summer Games.

Of the 555 American athletes who participated in that Olympics, more than half — 292 — were women. They dominated the women’s team sports of basketball, soccer, softball, gymnastics and track. Female athletes took home 19 gold medals, 10 silver and 10 bronze. Michelle Akers, Brandy Chastain, Mia Hamm, Lisa Leslie, Dominique Dawes, Cheryl Swoopes, Gail Devers — all of these women became household names.

But is this what you remember about the 1996 Games? Probably not. For all the victories of the Title IX Olympics for women, you likely remember something else about those Games. Tragedy overshadowed the American women’s achievements

The bombing in Atlanta

On July 27, three pipe bombs were planted in Atlanta’s Centennial Park, where Olympic celebrations were taking place. They detonated, killing one person and injuring 111 others. A second person died of a heart attack suffered in the chaos of the bombing site.

In the ensuing manhunt, security guard Richard Jewell became the first suspect, generating intense interest from the press. While on duty at the park, Jewell had spotted the backpack containing the bombs and helped to usher hundreds of people out of the area before they exploded.

But within days, the press was speculating that Jewell had planted the bombs. He was a hapless victim — an overweight loner with a checkered employment history who lived with his mother. Reporters staked out their apartment, reporting on his comings and goings. The media painted him as excitable, overly eager, “a badge-wearing zealot.” Surely, he planted the bombs just so he could “discover” them and be the hero, they concluded.

The suspect fights back

Jewell filed a libel and defamation lawsuit, declaring he was ready for a long battle.

“What more could they do to me that they haven’t already done?” he said. “This [the legal battle] is going to be easy compared to what they’ve done to me and my family.”*

The FBI investigated Jewell for months before they finally cleared him. But the story remained in the headlines, as law enforcement scrambled for leads in the bombing.

In July 1997, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno addressed Jewell’s complaints. “I’m very sorry it happened. I think we owe him an apology,” she said.**

Jewell’s lawsuit dragged on for years, even after his death in 2007. In the end, the courts ruled that because the news articles were written in good faith, there was no basis for a defamation claim.

The killer captured

It was another seven years and three more attacks before the suspect who was subsequently identified was captured. In 1997, Eric Rudolph bombed a women’s health clinic in Sandy Springs, Georgia, and a gay bar in Atlanta, injuring eleven people. In 1998, he bombed a Birmingham, Alabama, abortion clinic, killing a police officer and severely injuring a nurse.

A former soldier and carpenter from North Carolina, Rudolph was a skilled outdoorsman who eluded capture by hiding in the woods. In 2003, he was finally discovered and arrested. In 2005 he pleaded guilty to all of the bombings to avoid a death sentence. Rudolph was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Women finally recognized

The terrorist attack muted the significance of the 1996 Olympics for women at the time. But as athletic programs began to arise at all levels, from high school to the professional level, people increasingly traced the ascendance of women’s sports to the first generation of women who profited from the Title IX mandate.

“[The ’96 games] were… the first time we saw women’s sports at that scale, that level of greatness,” said Jessica Robertson of Togethxr, a women’s sports platform founded by four current-day Olympic gold medalists: Sue Bird (basketball), Alex Morgan (soccer), Simone Manuel (swimming) and Chloe Kim (snowboarder).***

In 1996, women took home the gold and the world finally noticed.

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* Jay Croft and Bill Rankin, “Security guard, newspaper reiterate their positions,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (January 29, 1997), p. C4.

** “Reno to Jewell: I regret the leak,” CNN Interactive (July 31, 1997).

*** Melissa Jacobs, “Summer of Gold: how the 1996 Olympics inspired a generation of female athletes,” The Guardian (August 16, 2021). Togethxr produced a six-part podcast series with interviews of female athletes from the 1996 Olympics along with current-day athletic stars.