Tag Archives: TitleIXTuesday

What’s in a name

In my romp through the sports world this year, the name of one university has popped up in conversation more than any other — UCLA.

            Here’s one instance:

            In 1939, UCLA enrolled baseball great Jackie Robinson. He became the school’s first athlete to letter in four varsity sports. He was one of four Black players on the football team, making UCLA college football’s most integrated team. Of course, Robinson then went on to become the first Black player on a Major League Baseball team.

            And another:

            In 1974, UCLA awarded the first athletic scholarship to a woman. Ann Meyers Drysdale was a standout basketball player, the first high school athlete to be chosen for a woman’s Olympic team. She was the first woman to sign an NBA contract (the men’s team!) and the first woman to broadcast an NBA game. She went on to have a stellar career in sports broadcasting.

            Yet one more:

            I’ve talked with people who said Title IX’s impact wasn’t felt for many years. Sportswriter Melissa Isaacson said no one really knew about it for at least three years after it became law. Others pointed out that before Title IX could really have an impact, women’s teams needed equipment, scholarships, high level coaching and competitive leagues. That all took time.

            But one day, a friend begged to differ. “We felt the impact right away,” said Roger Freberg.*

            Guess where he was in the 1970s. UCLA!

Tracking the new reality

            Roger Freberg was on a track and field scholarship at the university when Title IX was enacted. He says women appeared on the track almost immediately.

            “It might be because you don’t need much adaptation in track and field,” he says. “And it was a sport that had both men and women. We all adjusted pretty quickly.”

            Most coaches were supportive, Roger says. The pushback — at UCLA and other universities — came from the sports programs with the biggest budgets. In most cases, that meant the football and basketball programs. Coaches were afraid that Title IX would drain resources from their programs.

            UCLA’s track program wasn’t immune from the effects. Men’s scholarships were cut in half, Roger says, and when the team traveled, they no longer stayed in fancy hotels and the per diem allowance for meals was more modest.

            Still, the women were welcome. When asked why, Roger’s answer might sound sexist, but it was the reality of the time — and maybe not so different today.

            “The guys welcomed the women because they were extending the dating pool!” he says. “They’d help the women adjust their starting blocks, even though clearly they didn’t need the help. They played that old, old game.”

            Well, the other men did. Roger had gotten married in 1972, his sophomore year in college. He welcomed the women simply as fellow athletes.

Devil in the details

            Overall, Roger says any resistance was more practical than ideological. How would men and women share the weight room? Could the workout schedule be rearranged or would new facilities have to be built? How should tournaments be run to allow all athletes to remain warm and limber for their events?

            Roger doesn’t minimize the reality of the scholarship issue, though. The opportunity to attend college on an athletic scholarship narrowed.

            “You’d hear teammates say, ‘Well, now my younger brother might not make it unless he gets better,’” he says. “Universities began to offer partial scholarships, but a lot of athletes come from families that need the money and now they can’t afford the college bills.”

One more first

            As for Roger, he was UCLA’s first player to be an amateur in one sport and a professional in another. He was an All-American at UCLA; NCAA runner-up in discus; PAC 8 champion in discus and runner-up in shot put. He was caption of the team his senior year, and they were NCAA champions for three years and runner-up his fourth year.

            He was drafted in 1974 as a defensive lineman by the Los Angeles Rams. Although his premier events were the discus and shotput, football scouts were impressed by his sprinting times and figured he could take his ability to run short bursts to the football field. 

            I asked Roger why he thought UCLA was so progressive in racial and gender reform.

            “Southern California has a history not so much of tolerance but of practicality,” he muses. “If you have a good athlete, you’re thinking, ‘What can we do to help this person get to the next level?’ We just want to see people recognized for their ability.”

                                                            ______________________

* All quotes come from my interview with Roger on October 5, 2022.  

PHOTO: From the personal collection of Roger Freberg.

And yer OUT!

The World Series is on deck and that reminds me of a baseball player I’ve been meaning to write about. Jackie Mitchell — the girl who struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

            Virne Beatrice “Jackie” Mitchell was only the second female to play professional baseball.* Born in 1913, she learned the game from her father, which as you can imagine was unusual for the time.

            But a neighbor, Charles “Dazzy” Vance, also coached the budding player. He was a Major League pitcher who had lead the league in strikeouts for seven seasons.

            When Jackie was 16, she joined the Englettes, a woman’s team in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The lefty-throwing Jackie’s skill as a pitcher — and her sinking curveball — caught the eye of Joe Engel, also owner of the Chattanooga Lookouts, a AA minor-league team. On March 25, 1931, Engle signed Jackie to the team.

It’s game day

            On April 2, 1931, the Lookouts played an exhibition game against the New York Yankees, who were traveling north from spring training. The stands were filled with 4,000 spectators. 

            Seventeen-year-old Jackie took the mound in the first inning as a relief pitcher. The starting pitcher had given up a single and a double. Ruth and Gehrig were next in the lineup. 

            Mitchell was throwing her trademark sinker. Her first pitch to Ruth was called a ball, and Ruth swung at and missed the next two pitches. Dramatically, he asked the umpire to inspect the ball, and the umpire threw out a new one. The fourth pitch was called a strike — Ruth had struck out.

            At that, The Bambino charged the ump, while teammates hiked onto the field to lead him back to the bench. He stomped off the field and threw his bat against the dugout.

            Next up was Gehrig. Jackie threw three pitches; Gehrig swung at and missed all three. The crowd was on its feet with a standing ovation. She walked the next batter and was pulled from the game. The final score was 14-4 Yankees. But who really cared about the score!

            “Girl Pitcher Fans Ruth and Gehrig” blared the headline in the next day’s New York Times.

What’s the score?

            To this day, people debate the question: Did Jackie really did strike out Ruth and Gehrig? Engel was widely known as a stunt promoter. In the middle of the Great Depression, his team managed to attract large crowds despite the hard times.

            It was absolutely not a stunt, counters one sports historian. Being a lefty against the two left-handed sluggers gave Jackie an advantage.

            “Think about a pitcher coming in they’ve never seen before,” said Leslie Heaphy, an associate professor of sports history at Kent State. “She’s a lefty with a very deceptive pitch.”**

            About Gehrig, many people say he just wasn’t as skilled a hitter as Ruth. And people doubt the King of Swat would have agreed to a stunt that made him look bad. But Ruth tipped his hat to Jackie when he stepped up to bat. And the runner on first didn’t try to steal a base against her.

            Whatever the case, male sportswriters had a field day.

            “The very fact that such a thing should come to pass, even in burlesque, is cause for every male in the land to quake in his boots!” cried Alabama writer Ralph W. Callahan.***

You’re benched

            Baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis intervened and voided Jackie’s contract. She joined the barnstorming circuit — traveling teams that were equal parts sports and vaudeville — but in 1937, Jackie retired from the game.

            Jackie was angry that she was scorned as a sideshow act. (“She swings a mean lipstick!” smirked the New York Times). Even when she had the chance to play again — when the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League started up in 1943 during World War II — she refused. And in 1952, Major League Baseball banned women from the game. Jackie threw out the ceremonial first pitch at a Chattanooga Lookouts game in 1982, but that was it. She died in 1987.

            These stories of female firsts can be inspiring, but all too often they end like Jackie’s, a sad story of thwarted ambition. She was truly a woman scorned. That’s why Title IX is so important for female athletes. They just want the chance to play.

                                                _________________________

* Lizzie Arlington was the first woman to play on a men’s team. She pitched for the Reading (PA) Coal Heavers fifteen years earlier in 1898.

** Leslie Heaphy, “Overlooked No More: Jackie Mitchell, Who Fanned Two of Baseball’s Greats,” The New York Times (Nov. 7, 2017). Healey is also co-author of The Encyclopedia of Women and Baseball (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2016)

*** “Morning Musings,” The Anniston (Alabama) Star (March 29, 1931), p. 12. 

Collegiate fencer parries

Sometimes when your alma mater is in the news, it’s not something to be proud of. This week, I learned of a Title IX lawsuit brought against Penn State by Zara Moss, a student athlete who fenced for the university.

            In her suit, Zara accuses head fencing coach Wes Glon of abusing her and other female fencers and the university of failing to address these complaints.

            Now a graduate, the All-American fencer alleged that the team was a “hotbed for sexual assault and gender discrimination.” She accuses Glon of subjecting female fencers, including Moss, to physical, verbal and psychological abuse.

            “No one pursuing educational or athletic excellence should ever experience abuse for any reason,” said Zara’s lawyer, Chelsea Weaver.*

            The lawsuit falls under the banner of Title IX because abuse based on gender disrupts a student’s college years, making it impossible to have an equal educational experience. In many cases, abuse leads its victims to drop out of college or fail to pursue their educational or athletic goals.  

A litany of complaints

            As an example of the abuse, Zara, once an Olympic hopeful, said that Glon, who has coached at Penn State since 1985, injured her by forcing her to spar against him without protective equipment. Glon struck her as she “sobbed and pleaded with him to stop,” the lawsuit says.

            In her sophomore year, Zara suffered an ankle injury, and she says Glon forced her to return to fencing before her injury had healed. In addition, Zara says Glon bullied the female fencers about their weight, but didn’t level the same abuse at male fencers.

            “Wes’s conduct towards women fencers was no secret,” her attorney said. “Penn State athletic directors and administrators knew about or had observed Wes’s egregious behavior towards female fencers. But Wes’s prestige, influence, and connections were more important to Penn State than protecting its athletes.”**

            Zara says she suffers from an eating disorder, body dysmorphia (a mental health condition), panic attacks and anxiety as a result of the alleged abuse. She’s being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder and is under the care of a psychiatrist. She hasn’t fenced for more than a year.

They didn’t learn

            After the suit was filed, Penn State put Glon on paid leave. USA Fencing forced him to resign as president of the Central Division of USA Fencing and the U.S. Center for SafeSport, a nonprofit that monitors abuse in Olympic sports, began an investigation.  

            This is the second time that Glon has been suspended. In August 2021, USA Fencing and SafeSport placed him on a three-year suspension after Jennifer Oldham, a North Carolina fencing club owner and instructor, accused him of failing to act on a sexual misconduct complaint she brought against an assistant fencing coach. She accused George Abashidze of groping and sexually assaulting her on a flight after a national fencing competition in 1917.

            Glon was reinstated before the three years were up, after a favorable ruling from an arbitration panel. Oldham’s suit ultimately failed, the judge determining that it didn’t apply because Oldham had no ties to the university. But in 2019, USA Fencing suspended Abashidze, leading Penn State to fire him. 

            At first, Zara resisted filing a lawsuit, afraid of making life hard for women currently on the team. But she ultimately decided it was worth coming forward.

            “Things need to change,” she said.*** “I don’t want what happened to me to happen to anybody else, and the way to do that and to make sure that happens is to tell my story.”

                                                _________________________

**  Susan Snyder, “Penn State places head fencing coach Wes Glon on paid leave after allegations surface,” The Philadelphia Inquirer (September 12, 2022).

** Matt DiSanto, “Former Penn State Fencer Sues University, Coach Wes Glon for Alleged Abuse,”  StateCollege.com (April 12, 2022).

*** Bret Pallotto, “Zara Moss explains why she came forward with allegations of abuse on Penn State’s fencing team,” Centre Daily Times (April 13, 2022).

Little League firestorm

The story of how Maria Pepe, a 12-year-old girl from Hoboken, New Jersey, forced Little League to accept female players is pretty well known. I’ve written about it myself.

            But in reality, the Little League story is not one of a single girl up against a behemoth. It’s more a case of nationwide spontaneous combustion.

            In 1974, about twenty girls across the country brought lawsuits against the all-boy Little League baseball organization. The lawsuits stretched from the East Coast to the West Coast. Maria Pepe’s lawsuit was simply the first one to go to court — and the lawsuit that won the day.

            By the time that court case was settled, Maria was too old to qualify for Little League. In 1972, she had made a team, but she only played in three games before she was forced off the field.

Fighting small minds

            Meanwhile, a girl in Peabody, Massachusetts, had a similar story. When 10-year-old Janine Cinseruli showed up for tryouts in her town, she was barred from the field.

             “When I went to sign up, a guy said, ‘You can’t play,’ and I said, ‘Why?’ and he said, ‘Because you’re a girl,’” she recalled. “I was not that smart or worldly, but I knew right then it was the most ridiculous thing I ever heard of. … I said, ‘But I can play, I’m really good.’”*

            Janine’s mother, Marion, went to bat for her. She hired a lawyer and filed a complaint with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. Their argument was the same as Maria Pepe’s — that Little League uses public fields and therefore can’t exclude girls from participating.

            When the case went to court, the Suffolk County Superior Court agreed.

            “The boys used to play with the boys, and the girls with the girls, but times have changed,” said Judge Samuel Adams.**

            The ruling came down in favor not only of Janine, but also of 10-year-old Susan Wegryn of Wellesley, Massachusetts, who had filed her own suit. “Baseball is my sport, and I want to play it,” she said in court.***

            The ruling also covered Janet Bowe of Allston, Mass., and Debbie MacColl of Wellesley. Janet had been barred from tryouts, while Debbie had been accepted one year when she signed up using her initials only, but barred the next year, when she wrote out her full name. 

Storming the field

            Trailblazers like these girls don’t forge a path easily. Janine’s family was bombarded with hate mail, which they tried to ignore, but it wasn’t easy.

            “Most of the letters I couldn’t even repeat because they were obscene, that’s just what they were,” Janine’s mother, Marion, said. “But I feel they come from small-minded people and I just burn them, throw them away.”****

            Little League didn’t really see the light. They caved because the cost of the mounting lawsuits would have bankrupted the organization. They continued to insist that Little League was the “prerogative” of males only.

            Meanwhile, after the ruling, in Peabody alone, 25 girls showed up for tryouts.

            Janine celebrated her win in court by dedicating her first game to her attorney, Ruth Budd. She pitched in that game and struck out 16 batters.

            “Roger Clemens did that for the Red Sox [in 1997] and I thought, ‘Cool, I did that, too, when I was 11,’” she said later as an adult.

            Janine went on to play not only regular season Little League, but in all-star teams for the next two summers. She was even elected team captain. I guess she showed them! As did all the other ball-playing girls who started a firestorm on the baseball field.  

                                                __________________________

* Melissa Isaacson, “The girls who toppled Little League,” ESPN.com (June 24, 2014).

** Joseph M. Harvey, “Peabody girl wins Little League trial,” The Boston Globe (April 25, 1974), p. 3.

*** Paul Langner, “2 Mass. girls win Little League case,” The Boston Globe (May 19, 1974), p. 29.

**** This quote and the following one come from Isaacson, “The girls.”

Inaugural Ballers pub day!

It’s pub day for Andrew Maraniss! His book, Inaugural Ballers: The True Story of the First U.S. Women’s Olympic Basketball Team released today. Congrats to Andrew!

            The team played in the 1976 Olympics, only four years after the passage of Title IX. That surprised me, because for most women’s sports, it took years, and even decades, for teams to really get going. Women needed programs at all levels, college scholarships and high-level coaching, all of which didn’t exist at the time. In most cases, achievement did take a lot of time. This team was clearly an outlier.

Sports and social justice

            My first question for Andrew was: How is it that a guy gets to write about a women’s team? Isn’t that a job for a female author? He didn’t back away from the question.

            “Sports give me a way to write about social justice,” he says. “I write stories that expose racism, sexism and hypocrisy of all kinds. And, even today, it’s not true to say that sports have achieved a level playing field.”*

            Andrew’s earlier books established his credentials in social justice issues. His first book, Strong Inside: Perry Wallace and the Collision of Race and Sports in the South (Vanderbilt University Press, 2016) told the story of the first African American basketball player in the Southeastern Conference (SEC). He broke the color barrier when he began playing for the Vanderbilt Commodores in 1966.

            “My book stemmed from a paper I did in college about Perry,” he said. “His story had such an impact on me that it’s one of the few things I remember doing in college!”

            Perry Wallace’s story of persevering in the segregated South never left Andrew’s mind, and he decided to expand it into a book. A biographer doesn’t need the approval of his subject, but he contacted Perry anyway. His response? “Go for it!”

            Andrew spent the next eight years working on the book. His respect for Wallace only grew. “It was an incredible education for me,” he says. In 2017, a new version of the book released for young readers.

            Andrew’s next book, Games of Deception: The True Story of the First Olympic Basketball Team at the 1936 Olympics in Hitler’s Germany (Viking Books for Young Readers, 2021) addresses the big question of that Olympics: Should the U.S. have boycotted those Games given the dictator’s growing racial discrimination against Jewish people?

            His third book concerned bias of another kind. Singled Out: The True Story of Glenn Burke (Viking Books for Young Readers, 2021) tells the story of the first openly gay player in Major League Baseball.

            So there’s a theme here, right? Andrew Maraniss tells True Stories!

Inquiring minds want to know

            While Andrew was giving talks about the 1936 Olympic men’s basketball team, he faced some tough student audiences. 

            “I went to schools in North Carolina and Kansas, and the students there asked me the same question: ‘What’s the story of the first women’s Olympic basketball team?’” Andrew says.

            Well — that set the wheels turning. Andrew saw the 50th anniversary of Title IX coming up and thought, What better time?

            There are some lofty names on that Olympic team, many of whom he interviewed: Nancy Dunkle, Nancy Lieberman, Ann Meyers, Lusia Harris, coach Billie Moore and coach Pat Head (Summitt), who went on to become the winningest coach in women’s college basketball (only recently surpassed by Tara VanDerveer). Last week, he met another player from the team — Juliene Simpson — and she draped her silver medal around his neck!

            Yes, that underfunded, unappreciated upstart team that no one thought had a chance of succeeding went on to take a silver medal at the Montreal Olympics. The U.S. boycotted the Olympics in 1980 but the team won gold in 1984 and again in 1988. At the 1992 Games, the U.S. took home a bronze, but since that year has won gold at every Olympics, not even dropping a single game — a gold-medal winning streak of seven straight Olympics.

            Andrew hopes that by sharing the story of these pioneering women, he’ll not only inspire new generations, but also focus attention on the work yet to be done.

            “Title IX needs to be protected and expanded,” he says. “It’s important for both men and women to take an interest in women’s sports. We need to offer equal scholarships and pay equal attention. We’re not done, but this generation of women paved the way.”

                                                ________________________
* All of Andrew Maraniss’s quotes come from our interview on September 6, 2022. One last bit of information: Andrew was a baseball player in high school and was offered a scholarship to play at a D3 school (Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn.). But he was also offered a sports writing scholarship at Vanderbilt, which he accepted. He continues to work for his alma mater as special projects director for the athletic department. Visit Andrew’s website at http://andrewmaraniss.com/

He said what?!?

“Athletic competition builds character in our boys. We do not need that kind of character in our girls, the women of tomorrow.”

            Whoa! A judge deciding a pre-Title IX case actually said that. We’ll get to him in a little bit.

            In August 1970, Susan Hollander, a sophomore at Hamden High School in Connecticut, started running a mile a day, in preparation for trying out for her school’s track team. The problem? There was no girls track team at her school, so she planned to try out for the boys team.

            When school started, she began training with the boys team. The cross country coach was willing to let her compete, and the boys didn’t seem to mind. But the football coach saw her running with the boys and reported her to the athletic director.

            “The rules are against that. You have to tell her she can’t work out with you,” the athletic director told her coach, Carl Westberg.*

Going the distance

            The Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) got involved and ruled that Susan couldn’t run with the boys. The CIAC had banned co-ed teams, so if a girl wanted to participate in a particular sport and her school didn’t have a girls team, she couldn’t play.

            Fortunately, Susan’s father was a lawyer, and a runner himself. They brought a lawsuit against the Hamden school board. They were joined in the lawsuit by a swimmer at another Connecticut school, Jane Frederickson of Willimantic High School. Their suit was on behalf of all female athletes in the state of Connecticut who wanted to participate in non-contact sports on boys teams.

            The next year, in the spring of 1971, a judge dismissed the suit.

            “The challenge to win and the glory of achievement, at least for many boys, would lose incentive and become nullified,” wrote Judge John Clark Fitzgerald of allowing girls’ participation.**

            Not satisfied with that pronouncement, Judge Fitzgerald continued with the statement that I started my post with, one that has become infamous post-Title IX. 

            “Athletic competition builds character in our boys. We do not need that kind of character in our girls, the women of tomorrow.***

            Eye roll!

No support here

            The lawsuit went on to U.S. District Court in New Haven, this time backed by the American Civil Liberties Union. There, in January 1973, the young athletes won the right to compete.

            Judge Jan O. Newman limited the victory, however. The girls could compete on a boys team only if there wasn’t a comparable team for girls at the school. The ruling was also considered an experiment that was to last just one year. And — get this! — compliance was up to the administration at each school.

            Reaction to the ruling was as breathtakingly tone-deaf as Judge Fitzgerald’s comments.

            “If they want to play on my team, they can shower with my team,” huffed one Connecticut basketball coach.****

            And, instead of supporting the girls, the head of the CIAC’s Girls Athletic Committee trashed them.

            “It’s doubtful that either could be competitive on the same level with the boys,” Arden Curtis sniffed.

            Susan Hollander never benefited from the lawsuit she brought. At the time of the court victory, she was a senior, and her school had added a girls spring track team, which she joined. Even before the victory, she was willing to let the hubbub die down.

            “I don’t particularly enjoy all the attention,” she told the media.† “I just want to be on a team.” 

                                                ___________________________

* Lori Riley, “Changing A Mind-Set That Kept Girls Out Of Track, Cross Country,” The Hartford Courant (June 26, 2012).

** Judge’s Ruling Keeps Girl Off Cross Country Team” The Hartford Courant (April 1, 1971), p. 27.

*** Shelley Smith. “Not Quite the Game Intended,” Nike is a Goddess: The History of Women in Sports. Ed. Lissa Smith (New York: Grove Atlantic, 1998), p. 300.

**** Bob Baird, “CIAC Girls’ Activities Head Opposes Coed Competition,” The Bridgeport Post (January 26, 1973), p. 32. Arden Curtis’s quote comes from this article as well.

† Hartford Courant, p. 27.

Time for time travel

It’s surprising how little attention Title IX got when it was signed into law in 1972. But a lot was happening that year — both good and bad — so the headlines were claimed by events that buried a seemingly insignificant piece of legislation whose impact wouldn’t be realized for years.

            So, c’mon, hop in the way back machine with me and take a look at what was happening fifty years ago.  

                                                            ******** 

January 5. NASA initiates the space shuttle program. We’re conquering space!

January 25.  Shirley Chisholm, the first Black congresswoman, announces her candidacy for president. Her goal was a “union of the disenfranchised.” 

February 21. President Nixon begins an eight-day trip to China to meet with Mao Zedong. He’s the first president to make an official visit to the Communist country.

March 22. Congress sends the Equal Rights Amendment to the states for ratification. Activist Phyllis Schlafly wages war with her “STOP ERA” campaign.

March 24. “The Godfather” is released in theaters around the country. It’s a hit, to say the least!

April 16. The United States resumes its bombing campaign, targeting the North Vietnamese cities of Hanoi and Haiphong. The Vietnam War rages on.

April 17. Women run officially in the Boston Marathon for the first time. Nina Kuscsik of Huntington, New York, wins with a time of 3 hours, 10 minutes and 26 seconds.

May 15. Alabama Gov. George Wallace is shot and paralyzed at a rally in Maryland. An ardent racist, he had ordered police to shutter the state’s public schools rather than integrate them. On his orders, civil rights activists were attacked by state troopers.

May 26. Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev sign the SALT I treaty and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, both of which limit weapons systems. We’re trying to get along!

June 14–23. Hurricane Agnes kills 128 people along the East Coast.

June 23. President Nixon signs Title IX, part of the Education Amendments of 1972, into law. This should be big news!

June 23. But also on this day, five men hired by White House officials are arrested for breaking into the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. A scandal is brewing!

July 8. Actress and activist Jane Fonda begins a two-week tour of North Vietnam to protest the war. In an epic optics fail, she sits astride a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun for photographers. She gains the nickname “Hanoi Jane.”

July 21. On “Bloody Friday,” nineteen Irish Republican Army bombs explode across Belfast, killing nine and seriously wounding 130 other people. “The Troubles” continue.

July 25. The U.S. admits that Black men were used as guinea pigs in the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male,” beginning in 1932. Consent was never sought and treatment was withheld.   

August 1. Sen. Thomas Eagleton, the Democratic nominee for vice president, withdraws after his treatment and hospitalization for depression becomes known.

August 21. Nixon is nominated at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach for a second term, along with his running mate Spiro Agnew.

September 1. American chess player Bobby Fischer defeats Russian chess grandmaster Boris Spassky at a match held in Reykjavik, Iceland. He’s the first American chess champion.

September 5. Eleven athletes from the Israeli Olympic team are murdered by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September during the Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany. Incredibly, Olympic Chairman Avery Brundage says the Games must go on.

October 16. Country singer Loretta Lynn becomes the first female to win the Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year award. Chalk it up to “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”

November 7. Nixon defeats McGovern in a landslide election. But Watergate looms as Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein pound away at their typewriters.

November 14. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes at 1,003.16, the first time the stock index had topped 1,000. We’re in the money!

December 14. Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt become the last astronauts to walk on the moon.

December 25. Following the breakdown of peace talks, Nixon begins another bombing campaign against North Vietnam. “The Christmas Bombing” is widely criticized. The war drags on.

  ********

            Those of us who were following the news in the 1970s no doubt remember all of these events. We all wish we could go back in time and erase so much of what happened that year. But Title IX is one highlight of that eventful year that we would never wish to change!

PHOTO: Shirley Chisholm announcing her candidacy for president (Associated Press)

Let’s hear it for the dads

In June this year, the New York Times ran a piece on “Title IX parents”— parents who through the years have filed lawsuits on behalf of their daughters in order to enforce gender parity. The article focused on several mothers who sought redress through the courts.*

            But it’s not always mothers who are their daughters’ advocates. There are Title IX dads, too.

            In 1996, Ron Randolph took an early Title IX stand. Ron lived in Owasso, Oklahoma, and was a firefighter in nearby Tulsa. He was a single dad, with a son and a daughter. Fifteen-year-old Mimi played softball for Owasso High School.

            Mimi’s team played on an old dirt field a few miles from the school, while the boys’ baseball team had a state-of-the-art stadium complete with viewing stands and an electronic scoreboard.

            “Our guys’ team has three sets of uniforms, while all of our uniforms — total — are less than they have in one set,” Mimi told a reporter at the time.** The uniforms for her team didn’t even match.

            Her dad chimed in: “They played night games on a softball field where 23 of the 37 light bulbs were burned out.”***

            When the team went to the state championships for the first time in the school’s history, the school wouldn’t pay for motel stays. The girls had to drive back and forth every day.

A father’s awakening

            Ron heard about Title IX at a community seminar offered by Ray Yasser, a law professor at the University of Tulsa and an expert in sports law. That was the light-bulb moment for this dad.

            “I’m not a libber by any means,’’ he said. “But if it’s right, it’s right, and if it’s wrong, it’s wrong.”****

            Not only was Ron the parent of an athlete, he was taxpayer as well.

            “I’ve got a boy and a girl. And if I pay $100 every year to this school in taxes, and $10 of it goes to athletics, I think $5 ought to go to my boy, and $5 ought to go to my girl,” he said. “To me, it’s simple math.”†

            At the time, schools in Oklahoma as a whole had about equal numbers of enrolled boys and girls. Yet boys were offered 67 percent of the athletic opportunities, while girls had only 33 percent. And you’re talking about Title IX having been in place for 24 years! 

            Ron and the other parents asked the Owasso Independent School District to remodel the girls’ softball field. The district declined.

            Boy, was that ever a costly decision!

Oops!

            The parent group filed their lawsuit, and in May 1997, the district settled. They agreed to be in full compliance with Title IX by 1999. And, as part of the settlement, they had to construct a $275,000 softball facility. Ron laughed at that figure — if they had just remodeled the original field, he believed they could have spent about $35,000.

            “Anybody who gets sued now is an idiot,” he said. “Title IX is a fact of life. Parents will work with schools if the schools will work.”††

            If only Ron had been right! Here we are 50 years out from the passage of Title IX, and we’re still inching forward one lawsuit at a time. But things might move faster from now on, simply because of the generation of girls who are now grown up.

             “We’re now at the point where women who were high school athletes are raising families, and they definitely know their daughters are supposed to have what the men have had all along,” said Sam Schiller (a lawyer in Tennessee who has filed Title IX lawsuits in 30 states and has never lost).†††

            “It’s Title IX 2.0.”

                                                _________________________

* Bill Pennington, “The Real Enforcers of Gender Equity in Sports: Angry Parents” (June 22, 2022).

** Meg Sommerfield, “Title IX has become a more prominent tool for expanding athletic opportunities for girls,” American Association of School Administrators (undated).

*** Randy Ellis, “Struggles put girls on serve,” The Daily Oklahoman (October 3, 1999), p. 538.

**** David Hill, “A Pitch for Equality,” Education Week (August 1, 1996), p. 8.

† “A Pitch for Equality,” p. 8. (The asterisks were getting out of hand!)

††“Struggles,” p. 546.

†††“The Real Enforcers.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Paul Hellstern, The Daily Oklahoman

Follow the money

A Title IX battle is brewing at San Diego State University. But the university and the students don’t agree on what the issue is.

            Last year, the university cut the women’s rowing team. It’s rationale? The university has more female athletes than male athletes, so it can’t stay in compliance with Title IX without evening the score.  

            But seventeen female athletes sued the university, saying the issue isn’t about the number of female athletes. It’s about scholarship numbers. They countered that the university isn’t providing an equitable amount of scholarships for women.

            The women’s suit claims that for more than a decade, SDSU has awarded scholarships unequally. Over the past two years, it says, the shortfall has totaled $1.2 million.

            “It is a sad day for the entire SDSU community that we have to sue the university to make it comply with Title IX and provide athletic financial aid equally to women and men,” said Madison Fisk, a former rower.*

What are the rules here?

            The university disagrees that scholarships are the issue.

            “The truth is that SDSU awards approximately 95 percent of all possible scholarships permitted under NCAA rules for both its men’s and women’s teams, with the remaining fraction explained by legitimate reasons within SDSU coaches’ discretion,” the athletic director said.**

            A university can comply with Title IX by providing “substantially proportionate” athletic opportunities that match the gender enrollment. For example, if 50 percent of the student body is female, then roughly 50 percent of athletes should be women.

            But what happens when the numbers don’t match when it comes to men? At SDSU, male enrollment increased from 41.3 percent in 2005 to 44 percent in 2022. Yet in 2019-20, only 37 percent of SDSU’s athletes were men.

            SDSU’s solution was to cut a women’s sport. The rowing team had about 65 participants and offered up to 20 scholarships.

Warning: more numbers ahead

            The women who filed suit include eleven former rowing members and six women from the track and field team who joined the suit in solidarity. Fourteen of the women currently are students, while three have graduated.

            The women aren’t contesting the team’s elimination, only the scholarship awards. From  2010-20, female athletes at SDSU were granted about $2 million more in athletic scholarships than men. But, overall, scholarships have been less per female athlete because of the higher number of female athletes.

            In school year 2019-20, for example, 58.1 percent of athletes (315 women) received just 50.6 percent of the $9.2 million scholarship pool, a deficit of almost $700,000, the lawsuit states.

Is this a first?

            When the women filed suit in February, they claimed that their action represents the first time a woman’s sports team has sought monetary damages from a school for violating Title IX.

            That could be true, but I’m looking into it. The more I learn about Title IX, the more gems I discover from the past. I know, for example, that the first lawsuit seeking compensation in a case of sexual harassment was in 1986. Christine Franklin sought $6 million in damages from the North Gwinnett High School in Suwanee, Georgia, after suffering a teacher’s sexual harassment. The case was settled out of court.

            Whether the San Diego women’s lawsuit is the first, it probably won’t be the last. According to data published by the Department of Education, 31.4 percent of NCAA Division I  athletic departments (109 of 348 schools) failed to meet the “substantially proportionate” standard in 2021.

            Even so, it’s the rare — and courageous — woman who dares to bring a lawsuit against her school.

            “No one goes to college planning to sue their school,” said Arthur Bryant, the women’s attorney. “The lesson of Title IX’s enforcement in 50 years, sadly, is if women want equality, they have to sue. No one else is going to do it.”***

                                                __________________________

* Daniel Libit, “Female rowers sue San Diego State in First Title IX damages claim,” Sportico (February 7, 2022).

** Mark Zeigler, “Female athletes sue San Diego State for alleged Title IX violation,” San Diego Union Tribune (February 7, 2022). The NCAA caps the number of total scholarships a school can award per sport.

*** Dan Murphy, “San Diego State athletes band together in Title IX fight: ‘If women want equality, they have to sue’,” ESPN (June 14, 2022).

PHOTO: 2018 San Diego State University women’s rowing team

But Susan started it

In my last post, I mentioned that groundbreaking woman’s advocate Barbara Hackman Franklin and I share an alma mater — Penn State.

            That’s not all we share! We also both have a connection with the woman suffrage movement. Before I began writing about Title IX, I wrote about the women who powered the 19th Amendment to victory in 1920.*

            We’ll get to that in a minute. First, let me introduce Barbara.

Many firsts, many slights

            In the 1960s, Barbara broke gender barriers in corporate and government spheres. She was one of the first female graduates of the Harvard Business School and the first female with an MBA hired by the Singer Company. From there, she went to Citibank, and then on to the Nixon White House, where she created a path for women to be hired for leadership roles. After that, President H.W. Bush named her U.S. Secretary of Commerce.

            While Barbara was forging ahead, she ran into some of the attitudes that women have perpetually faced in a world run by men.

At Singer: “I know that the salaries being offered to us women in the [Harvard Business School] class of ‘64 were less by a rather hefty amount than those being offered to the men,” she said in an interview for Penn State’s “A Few Good Women” oral history project.**

At Citibank: “I remember being chastised mightily for wearing a red dress. I’ve always liked red but was told not to wear bright colors. There was one other time when I knew I didn’t get as much of a salary increase as the guy who worked beside me. I raised that issue and was told, ‘You don’t need that salary increase. You’re doing fine, for a girl, and, besides, you have a husband who works.’”

At the White House:  “In some of my speeches I commented about the way I was described as ‘tiny, diminutive and Dresden-doll-like.’ Would we ever talk about the ‘diminutive, Dresden-doll-like’ Henry Kissinger?”

At the Commerce Department: “Somewhere there arose the impression that I was appointed to be a ‘cheerleader,’ and not to run that department. The quiet implication was, ‘My goodness. Can a woman really run that big conglomerate of a department?’”

Teaming up with Susan B.

            And here’s where the connection with the suffrage fight comes in.

            Eventually, Barbara and a few of her co-workers dreamed up a way to call out men who held these kinds of attitudes.

            In her own words, here’s how they did it:

            “One of the things that we dreamed up in 1972 that we thought would underscore this push toward equality was a bust of Susan B. Anthony to be placed in the White House. We had to get someone to create the bust, and several women’s groups agreed to pick up the tab.

            They decided to copy the bust of Susan B. Anthony that is in the Capitol. It was done in bronze somewhere in upper New York State.

            The bust was shipped to the White House and taken to my office. Then we had to wait for some months before there was an opportunity to present her. Mrs. Nixon did the honors.

            Between the time that Susan B. was delivered and her presentation to Mrs. Nixon, she resided in a closet in my White House office on the third floor of the Old Executive Office Building.

            When someone said something that was derogatory about women, Susan B. would steal out of my closet in the dead of night and appear the next morning in the office of the guilty party to underscore her point.

            Then, of course, I had to come and rescue her and bring her back to the closet.

            It was known that the bust and the spirit of Susan B. Anthony roamed the White House on occasion at night. She just knew exactly where to go, and [White House Press Secretary] Ron Ziegler was always on the top of the list.”

            Perfect! I think that we all should have a bust of Susan B. roaming at night calling out these outdated stereotypes and attitudes, don’t you?

                                                ____________________

* Women Win the Vote! 19 for the 19th Amendment (Norton Young Readers, 2020).

** Barbara’s quotes come from “A Few Good Women,” which is part of the Penn State collection, “Advancing the Cause of Women in Government, 1969-74.” It accompanies a book by Lee Stout titled A Matter of Simple Justice: The Untold Story of Barbara Hackman Franklin and A Few Good Women (State College, PA: Penn State University Libraries, 2015).