So, given the success of Title IX, and given the nobility of its ends, why does the mention of it still cause controversy and consternation? Perhaps Title IX was not a measure sufficient in itself to bring about all the changes it was intended to effect. I do hope that you can hear my critical thought about the measure as something new, and as something based on my own experience, instead of on a reactive misapprehension, because my problem is not with Title IX in itself, but rather with how it lets us off the hook. My reservations are concerned with the fact that Title IX can appear to be sufficient reform: because they think a problem has been solved for them, university administrators feel permitted to turn their attention to other issues. “We don’t have to attend to bringing equality to our university athletic culture; we have Title IX!” This seems like a line of dialogue from a bad dream, but it can be closer to the truth than we would like to think.
Title IX does not exactly inspire innovative thought. The essential tool set up by it is threatening and punitive: fail to comply with Title IX, and certain federal funding for your campus is cut off. (Quite effective, when one considers there is no better way to bring change on a campus than to threaten the withdrawal of funds!)
Because Title IX relies on courts for enforcement, undergraduate athletes and university administrators with different ideas about what athletics programs should do, can be compelled to enter into lawsuits, and into an adversarial system. Courts operate according to adversarial principles, one side pitted against the other, both forced to adhere to certain rules of evidence and court procedure. In a court case, the two sides often find themselves adopting certain positions that reflect not their beliefs or motives but only a specialized and stylized legal strategy. People with an interest in shaping the course of sports on their campuses are transformed into potential litigants; this aspect of Title IX has had a negative effect on college campuses, as participation in sports has come to be regarded as a right to be fought over rather than as an opportunity to be pursued.
Allow me to admit that, as a university president, I strongly dislike this adversarial model. I do not want students to think first of filing a lawsuit before it occurs to them to work with administrators for change. I am not certain that is the best way to run an athletic department, let alone a university! I have always been concerned that Title IX sets up a mood of contention and gives rise to the idea that we are perpetually divided by our vested interests instead of united by our common goals. Sports, which can be a unifying and vivifying force on college campuses, become a legal battleground, and Title IX, which was created as a means to multiply the benefits of sports for all, becomes an instrument of ill-will. I suspect that from this mentality comes the idea that women’s and men’s sports are opposed to each other, and that any gains women achieve come somehow at the expense of men, because the adversarial model only allows for the gains of the one being at the cost of another.
But, since I have voiced those concerns, please allow me to say what I wish, as something of an idealist, I did not have to say: that Title IX was (and remains) an absolute necessity because it provoked change that otherwise would have occurred at a glacial pace, or not at all. Such a dramatic threat from the outside was necessary to prompt change in those athletics programs where the dominant male sports culture was so entrenched and self-protective that only a strong statement from the federal government would bring change. One could argue that the shifts in culture would eventually have carried that change, but how long would we have had to wait for that? And how can we know that all of those shifts in culture that we would have had to count on would have occurred without Title IX in the mix in the first place?
Sadly, I have to admit that even the best efforts of most administrators are not enough to account for and monitor noncompliance. In our present non-utopian state of affairs, Title IX is absolutely necessary to check egregious cases of unfair treatment that occur as a result of budgeting decisions that may or may not be politically driven. Realistically, Title IX suits and claims in some form will probably always continue to serve a useful purpose. And sometimes, dislike it though I do, the adversarial model is necessary as the last resort of those for whom negotiation has already failed, and who lack the power to stand up to an entire institution on their own.
Ultimately, my concerns about judicial interference have less to do with Title IX itself than with the lack of a sense of responsibility among some college administrators and athletics programs. Our role as leaders is to make things right before they go wrong, or to eliminate the possibility of wrong occurring, to create and maintain a culture where measures for equality would be too integral to our daily operations to be thought of as controversial. After all, we are to strive to run our colleges according to the humane ideals of higher education. We are to put our students first, treating them with the respect, regard, and dignity they deserve as human beings searching out a path in life.
