When we incorporated the athletics program at Vanderbilt into the Division of Student Life, we did so in order that the operations of our athletic program would always be in alignment with our mission and goals as a University. We did so in order that athletes would be seen as fully rounded scholars, as students instead of as pre-professional athletes who, we assume, do not really want a diploma anyway. We wanted to make certain that our student-athletes take real classes, that they attend those classes, that their grades stay healthy, and that they graduate. We made changes in order to encourage our student-athletes to be successful in all facets of campus life, cultural and social and not just athletic. And because Vanderbilt is in every way an equal-opportunity University, we made sure that athletes would always be treated according to our humane mission and that their treatment would arise from the central-most heart of University operations, thus opening opportunities to all of our athletes yet again.
When Vanderbilt made the decision to rework our operations, our decision originated from within the institution. It was not externally invented or imposed; it evolved here out of our truest values. The change belonged – and belongs – to us. It is now part of our self-definition. And because we created our own change, the change “took.”
So I would encourage my peers in higher education to take their own initiative to promote women’s sports, instead of assuming that Title IX will do all the work for them. We cannot take refuge in a litigation-based approach. We cannot make policy simply out of trying to avoid litigation! Outcomes of excellence will never result from doing the minimum amount required, from putting in only the least possible care or effort. Excellence arises from crafting policies in the best interests of our students. Positive cooperation and assertive good faith will always produce better results than contentious battles.
Change may originate from the outside, from Congress and from the courts, but reform that endures, and that alters not just foreground appearance but background assumption as well, must come from consensus and conciliation within an institution. Change should be based not solely on fear and recrimination or legal requirement, but on a desire to do what is right. I firmly believe that true change comes not from an external push, but from real leadership within an institution.
Title IX applies to well over three thousand institutions of higher education in this country, each one with its own traditions, its own shortcomings, its own strengths and priorities and goals. Each one will have its own way of determining how it can most truly serve the cause of equality. Title IX is a policy initiative that must operate in a world that is complex and always changing. The responsibility for the direction and quality of that change lies with us. Title IX does work. But for it to work optimally, it requires reform from within institutions. We must continue to improve the culture of intercollegiate athletics so that the threat of punitive measures becomes unnecessary and Title IX ultimately becomes obsolete.
Every reform I have ever gotten credit for making in college athletics I did out of one sole motivation, the only motivation that counts: I care about students. I care about what happens to them, and I want to see that they are given the best possible opportunity to excel as human beings. Any university or college that values students according to their economic desirability and perceived profitability has lost its mooring as an institution of higher education and has sacrificed its authority to teach on any humane subject. We are, and always should be, institutions devoted to students, students of all races and of all genders. They are where our treasure lives; they are our life.
