I bumped into
an interesting article about athletics programs being cut based on the sex of the student population. The cuts surprised me ...
James Madison University in Virginia is cutting athletics programs to match the sex ratio of their student population. For every guy at James Madison there are about 2 girls but for every male athlete there was only one female athlete. The University decided that the disproportionant ratio of athletes did not meet Title IX standards, the federal law from the Civil Rights movement that demanded equal, non-discriminatory access to school programs for all student populations.
In protest, the men's swim team stripped down to speedo's and ran laps around the University's
Education Hall to "to show how they have been figuratively and actually left out in the cold". Here's a funny article about the protest:
http://www.thebizofknowledge.com/2006/11/james_madison_university_demon.html
I find this situation hilariously ironic. On one hand I have usually been critical of college athletic programs, on the other I am also critical of reverse civil rights. Title IX does not demand, at least not from
the copy I have read, a numerical match between school programs and student populations. The law sounds like it should
prevent discrimination and
provide access to programs that a school offers. And the law has been in effect since the 1970's, so why is James Madison all of a sudden changing?
As the population of women attending college continues to grow faster than men, I'm sitting back to see if this interpretation of civil rights, an interpretation that seems to be some kind of extreme feminism, actually overcomes the problems men created or if it repeats them ...