Title IX Defiance
Athletes launch ‘Save Our Sports’ campaign
By John Galle & Meagan Mihalko, sports editor & senior writer
Posted on October 5, 2006

Mark Rinker was told to be at a mandatory meeting at 3 p.m. in the Convocation Center Friday afternoon. He wasn’t told why. He was just told to go.

Rinker, a junior runner, along with a crowd of JMU student-athletes, were told that their varsity teams were being cut from the athletics program in order for the university to become Title IX compliant.

Geoff Polglase, the associate athletic director, issued a statement to the group of students, many of whom broke into tears.

“I was shocked,” sophomore swimmer Jacob Torok said. Torok transferred to JMU from the University of New Hampshire last year, after their team was cut. “I always joked about this happening, but I never actually thought it would.”

Since Friday, the impacted athletes have emerged from their shock to band together and fight the Board of Visitors’ decision.

Student athlete reaction

Within hours of hearing the news, senior swimming tri-captains Mitch Dalton, John Chartier and Josh Fowler launched a group on Facebook.com and an e-mail account to save JMU swimming. Since Friday, about 4,000 have joined the Facebook group and the e-mail account has been extended to help all of the cut athletic programs.

“We really want students to know that they should let their voices be heard,” Dalton said. “To say there’s no way this can change is un-American.”

Impacted athletes from each sport gathered at the Convocation Center Tuesday evening at 7:30 p.m. to discuss potential courses of action. Senior runner Jennifer Chapman addressed a crowd of nearly 250, proposing a “Save Our Sports” campaign. A number of teams not directly impacted by the cuts sent representatives to show their support.

“It’s kind of like that ‘all together one’ thing,” Dalton said. “It doesn’t have to be athletics, it can be students, sororities, fraternities — we just want to get everyone.”

Dalton and the men’s swimming team have already booked a space on the commons for Oct. 27 to boost student involvement. They will also be hosting a rally Nov. 1.

The S.O.S. campaign will start petitioning on campus Saturday with a Family Weekend goal of 20,000 signatures.

Why comply now?

The biggest question raised by affected athletes is: Why is JMU making these changes now after being out of compliance for the past five years?

In January 1996, the Office for Civil Rights issued a policy clarification with regard to Title IX legislation. It clarified a three-part “effective accommodation test.” The test allows three tests to determine whether or not an institution is in compliance with Title IX. Karen Morrison, the NCAA director of education services, said an institution may: 1) Provide participation opportunities for women and men that are substantially proportionate to their respective rates of enrollment as full-time undergraduate students; or 2) Demonstrate a history and continuing practice of program expansion for the underrepresented sex; or 3) Fully and effectively accommodate the interests and abilities of the underrepresented sex.

Morrison said Title IX does not mandate cutting men’s programs to provide equitable opportunities for women.

So, why did JMU administration choose to use the first test of proportionality over the second two?

“There’s so many other [alternatives] you can take and still comply with the law,” Fowler said. “The fact that they chose this one reflects pretty poorly upon our university.”

University rationale

JMU athletic director Jeff Bourne said the university could not use the second tier of the accommodation test. Bourne said that since adding the softball team in 2001, JMU has not made any accommodations to increase women’s sports to match the male-to-female enrollment ratios.

The third tier of the test, usually executed through a campus survey, which was done in 2001, was not done this time.

“We could have,” Bourne said, “but we believe very firmly that [proportionality was our best option].”

Bourne said JMU also anticipated that club teams (who would receive first priority) would have petitioned to become varsity teams.

“We are maxed out on the number of teams we can support,” JMU spokesman Andy Perrine said. “We’d have to add 220 [female] athletes, and I think there just aren’t enough sports to do that.”

Another component to the situation is money.

“[Title IX is] federal law,” Perrine said. “Any school that receives federal funding has to abide by the law. A large amount of funding in the form of student-athlete scholarships [comes from this].”

Perrine said if JMU did not act to correct its incompliant percentages, it could have lost scholarship money from federal funding.

Stacy Fuller, the student representative of the BOV, said it took $500,000 to run the 10 cut sports teams out of JMU’s $21 million operating budget for athletics.

“There is no way we would have cut 10 sports programs for $500,000,” Bourne said. “There are not enough dollars involved to make this a financial decision.”

Fuller said one of her main concerns is the issue of reverse discrimination.

“I think they need to take it to Richmond and Washington, D.C.,” Fuller said. “I think it’s going to be a thing that most schools are going to have to deal with, because female enrollment is going up so high nationwide.”

Aftermath

In the wake of the Title IX decision, three women’s teams will benefit by receiving full NCAA scholarships: golf, tennis and swimming — all of which lost scholarships in 2001. Also, the men’s tennis and golf teams were granted partial scholarships and will receive full ones by 2011.

“It’s bittersweet,” JMU women’s tennis coach Maria Malerba said. “I was on the other side of this five years ago, and I was devastated by [the scholarship cuts]. But I still had a team and a job.”

JMU men’s swimming coach Chris Feaster isn’t as lucky.

Feaster approached the administration in August about Title IX rumors. He was told then they were not true.

“I’m not worried about myself, I’m worried about the team,” Feaster said.

While underclassmen student-athletes may look to transfer, many juniors may not have that option.

Junior Brian Freitag, who placed second in the 400 and 200-yard individual medley in the 2005-’06 Colonial Athletic Association championships, said, “It makes no sense to transfer.”

For many juniors, transferring would require a fifth year (without eligibility) for them to graduate.

Many of the impacted teams have been improving in the conference, which makes the decision even harder to swallow. Men’s swimming, for example, jumped from seventh to fourth in the CAA last year and is vying for its 10th-conference championship in its 32-year history at JMU.

“We’re on the cusp and we won’t be allowed to reach the pinnacle,” Feaster said. “We can win without scholarships, but not without a team.”