Posted on April 19, 2007
At 7:45 p.m. Tuesday, a concerned and attentive crowd filled the first floor hallway of Godwin Hall. The meeting wasn’t the most formal of gatherings, but it was still of utmost importance to the members of the various JMU varsity sports teams.
In the dimly lit corridor around 50 Madison athletes and members of the Save Our Sports Coalition listened to the voice that is giving them the one thing they desire most: hope.
Larry Joseph, a lawyer with the non-profit organization, Equity in Athletics, answered athletes’ questions while laying out the plan for saving the sports teams through a recently filed lawsuit.
“We’re asking questions and finding out what’s going on with the lawsuit,” freshman gymnast Heather Hoffler said prior to the meeting. “We want to know our chances and if we’re going to be allowed to keep our sport while it’s going on.”
A former member of the environmental department of a Washington regulatory firm, Joseph became interested in Title IX and equality in athletics in 1999 after hearing of what he deemed “unfair” cases similar to JMU’s.
The University and Board of Visitors first made the cuts on September 29, 2006, in order to become Title IX compliant under the proportionality clause. The law requires collegiate athletic programs to mirror their school’s undergrad population in percentage by gender. Seven men’s teams were cut along with three on the women’s side.
“I feel like we we’re told in a really immature way,” Hoffler said. “Jeff Bourne [JMU athletic director] didn’t even tell us, he had other people do it.”
Joseph added that it was more than the way it was handled with the athletes and, according to Joseph, the school’s interpretation of the decision was wrong.
“We’re going to argue that you can’t cut the men’s track team and not cut the women’s because that’s discrimination against the men,” Joseph said.
The first step for EIA though will be to add JMU as a defendant along with the Department of Education. EIA will then petition the judge for a preliminary injunction, which would restrain JMU from going forward with the cuts until a ruling has been made.
This injunction will be especially important to athletes like freshman runner, James Snyder. Snyder is among a number of the athletes who is looking at other schools to compete at and has housing contract near High Point University that has a cancellation deadline of June 1.
“We love to compete, but more than anything we’re just trying to get a feel if we can get it back,” Snyder said.
Other athletes voiced similar sentiments and wanted to know what would happen in the event the sports were reinstated, but they had already signed with another school.
Joseph explained that if the EIA wins over JMU and the sports are reinstated, the individual athletes would have to become plaintiffs themselves if they wanted to be reimbursed for any deposits put on other schools. He added that in all likelihood the court would force JMU to pay those sums.
Another question the athletes had was whether the University could still cut the teams without having to claim Title IX compliance as a reason.
“If we win on merits they could in theory cut the archery teams,” Joseph said as an example.
He emphasized though that there are Board of Visitor members that support the athlete’s cause have no choice in the matter, because the DOE can cut the school’s funding if it doesn’t adhere to Title IX standards.
Joseph added that if the courts were to find the DOE in the wrong, that the members of the board would support the teams if the money and interest was there.
Hoffler hopes that Joseph is right. Although she has no plans for transferring, she still wants to compete at the school that gave her a first taste of the college experience.
“It’s everything, the people I’ve met, UREC, the academics seem fitting,” the North Stonington, Connecticut native said. “Besides this [decision] I haven’t really come across anything I haven’t liked here.
The teams are hoping to hear of an injunction before May 1, the signing deadline of other schools.
