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Take Action
By Leo Kocher
Below is an action alert from the College Sports
Council, the most effective advocate for saving college sports programs from
gender-quota-destruction. It only takes a minute to email your senators – please
do it now.
Dear CSC member;
Although the elections are less than two weeks away, the current Congress will
remain in session until January 2005. And Congress has important unfinished
business, including several judicial nominations that have been pending for
months without a vote. The College Sports Council urges you to write the
Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Orrin G. Hatch, and both of the
senators from your state to urge that the Senate have a vote on President Bush’s
appointment of Thomas B. Griffith to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District
of Columbia Circuit.
From June of 2002 to July of 2003, Mr. Griffith served as a member of the
President's Commission on Opportunity in Athletics and was a strong proponent
for reasonable reforms of Title IX regulations. Mr. Griffith fully understood
the damage caused by the proportionality prong of the Three Part Test. As part
of his work on the Commission, he proposed that the Department of Education
eliminate proportionality as a measurement for compliance with Title IX, which
would have put an end to the unfair gender quota system that eliminates
opportunities for young men to play sports.
Mr. Griffith’s appointment to the DC Circuit would place a reasonable voice and
highly qualified jurist on the bench. For months, gender quota advocates have
aggressively lobbied to deny Mr. Griffith a vote, which is the only way they can
prevent his appointment.
We ask that you immediately write your senators to insist that (1) the Senate
vote on Mr. Griffith’s nomination, and (2) that they vote in favor of his
nomination.
Go to www.senate.gov to find your senators' mailing and e-mail addresses.
Please cc: info@collegesportscouncil.org
Sincerely,
Eric Pearson
Executive Director
College Sports Council
www.collegesportscouncil.org
Has the Bush Administration Helped Counter the
Devastation of Male Athletics in Colleges Due to Title IX’s Misinterpretation?
Certainly not as much as anyone who is not hostile toward males would have
liked. The list of positives is pretty short.
1) The Bush Administration did appoint an Assistant Secretary of the Department
of Education’s Office of Civil Rights who was a far cry from his predecessor –
the Clinton appointed radical Norma Cantu who was going after male collegiate
athletes with a vengeance.
2) The Bush Administration did appoint a Federal Commission that held extensive
hearings on how well the current Title IX interpretation was working in
athletics. Because of some very heavy lifting by a few heroic individuals like
Lou Goldstein and Gary Abbott the hearings ended up serving as a great forum for
getting the truth out on how horribly Title IX had been distorted from it
original intent by the US Department of Education. It even led to a “60 Minutes”
story that was devastating to those who tried to defend the current Title IX
policy. There was no doubt that public opinion was significantly moved as a
result of this commission’s work. Our Title IX reformers won the battle in the
hearings – the 15-member commission overwhelmingly passed several important
reforms. Unfortunately the Bush Administration fell very short in implementing
these reforms - buckling under the threats of the special interest groups like
the National Women’s Law Center, NOW, the Women’s Sports Foundation, that lined
up against Title IX reform.
3) The judicial appointments put forward by Bush are more likely to give a fair
hearing to this issue than most of the federal judges have thus far.
The reluctance of the Bush Administration to push Title IX reform was due to
election politics. Given today’s apparent dead-heat nature of the presidential
election it is difficult to deny that they might have had a point. If Bush wins
a second term will the targeted male athletes find relief? Hard to know but
after November the re-election concern no longer exists.
The other side of the equation is what will happen if Bush loses? What can we
expect from a Kerry Administration? One thing we know is that Kerry sponsored
Senate Resolution #153 in 2003 - along with Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton.
This resolution urged the Bush Administration to ignore all the welcome
recommendations from the aforementioned federal commission appointed to examine
Title IX and athletics.
It is difficult to imagine Kerry judicial appointments that will not support a
gender quota approach to athletics. While it does appear that Republicans are
afraid of the gender quota advocates, the fact is the Democrats are flat out
dependent on them as a constituency. Perhaps the adage, “no situation is so bad
that it could not get worse” is what is applicable here.
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