...goes to Barnard College senior Lisa Lewis for her lovely anti-Title IX diatribe.
I was going to let this editorial slide because I have a few ethical qualms about calling out college students (who are not actually taking my classes anyway and even then I try to be didactic and tactful about it as it is a place of learning). But Lewis used the term femi-nazis and thus all bets are off.
The problem started when I thought Lewis and I were on the same page. Since the passing of NCAA president Myles Brand, I have been more than a little concerned about who his replacement will be. So is Lewis. But for very different reasons.
Lewis believes the next leader of the NCAA needs to be in touch with the world we live in-- a world in which women now exceed men in college admissions and so she comes to this conclusion:
Legislation of the 20th century, like Title IX, needs to be reevaluated in the light of the world we live in.
I don't what they are teaching young women at Barnard these days, but the reevaluating of Title IX she wants is its abolishment basically because of its allegedly unfair quota system which has resulted in her friend not being allowed to walk on (or attempt to walk on) to the men's basketball team at Columbia. And the world we live in certainly is not one of gender equity in sport or any other realm for that matter.
She states that Columbia is not in compliance with prong one though she believes the NCAA has mandated proportionality as the only compliance option for participation. But the NCAA has not said it will only support proportionality. It found fault with and came out publicly against the Bush administration's "correction" to prong three that would simply allow schools to email interest surveys to the entire student body and count a non-response as a mark of satisfaction with the current state of athletic affairs.
Lewis writes that she thought an institution like Columbia would be immune to the whole silly concern over numbers of men and women playing sports. I had thought that Barnard women would be immune to conservative, Bush-era, anti-Title IX rhetoric. Guess we all assumed too much.
2 comments:
Ken, you are so right. The Barnard student has no clue why Title IX was initiated or what it purports to do. She is a classic example of the power of hegemony. Good for you for calling her out.
And, of course, we know who came up with the "prongs."
You guessed it! Those "prongs" involved with football!
Hoisted on their own petard!
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