Title IX Commission Releases Final Report; Some Members Critical

By WELCH SUGGS

Thursday, February 27, 2003
Washington

A federal commission studying Title IX released its much-anticipated final report Wednesday amid heavy criticism from two of its own members, several senators, and even a couple of film stars.

The report calls on Roderick R. Paige, the U.S. secretary of education, to publish clearer guidelines to help schools and colleges comply with Title IX, the 1972 law that bans gender discrimination at institutions receiving federal funds.

It also argues that male athletes have lost opportunities as colleges try to meet Title IX rules, and the commission recommended that the Education Department publish new rules to help male wrestlers, gymnasts, and athletes in other nonrevenue sports. The specific recommendations were unchanged from a draft of the report obtained last week by The Chronicle.

Edward Leland, co-chairman of the commission, said the panel also wanted to call on the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights to enforce current rules and guidelines more vigorously to help address inequities that female athletes still face throughout the country.

"We heard a lot of arguments that, after 30 years, we're still not there," said Mr. Leland, athletics director at Stanford University. "Most of the commissioners would say that we still have much to do to ensure that women have equal opportunities."

A majority of the panel's members agreed, though, that Title IX was in need of an in-depth review and that the civil-rights office's enforcement of the law needed some "adjusting" to deal with issues affecting men's teams.

Those themes in the group's final report prompted the two commissioners representing women's groups, Donna de Varona and Julie Foudy of the Women's Sports Foundation, to release a minority report at a celebrity-filled news conference at the U.S. Senate.

The actresses Geena Davis and Holly Hunter announced a national campaign to educate the public about Title IX and the commission's recommendations, while four Democratic senators -- Thomas A. Daschle of South Dakota, Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, Patty Murray of Washington, and Harry M. Reid of Nevada -- criticized the report as flawed. Senator Daschle, the minority leader, said the recommendations would "slacken our efforts for equal opportunity."

"This would be a terrible step backwards," he said.

Senator Murray said she would call on the Senate's Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions to hold hearings on the commission and its findings. Sen. Olympia J. Snowe, a Republican from Maine, also released a statement criticizing the majority report.

In their report, Ms. de Varona and Ms. Foudy said that the commission's work did not "compile all the evidence necessary to fully address the state of gender equity in our nation's schools, and did not allow sufficient time for commissioners to conduct either a careful review of the evidence that was compiled or an assessment of the potential impact of the various recommendations."

They also published their own set of seven recommendations, many of which parallel the more-general recommendations in the main part of the commission's report: namely, that the Education Department should do more to educate schools and colleges about Title IX and its requirements, and that cutting men's teams is not a favored practice.

Representatives of men's sports, who have suffered losses that they attribute to the way colleges interpret the law, said they were mostly pleased with the report.

"There's an acknowledgment that there is a problem, and that's a huge step," said Leo Kocher, head wrestling coach at the University of Chicago. "I think that what they're recommending falls short of what's going to be fair to males and females, and there's a lot more work to be done, but I'm grateful they listened."

Mr. Leland and the panel's other leader, Cynthia Cooper, presented the report to Mr. Paige in a ceremony at the Education Department on Wednesday afternoon. The secretary is under no obligation to act on any of the 23 proposals, but Education Department staff members have indicated some interest in putting new standards out for comment under the Administrative Procedures Act, as is called for in one of the commission's recommendations.

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