Subverting Title IX by remedying discrimination against women?

I so appreciate the growing number of voices in the blogosphere talking about sport and gender. It means that when I just cannot muster enough snark to address the latest issue, there are others who will.

So I have indeed read about the latest investigation by the US Civil Rights Commission into discrimination against female applicants to liberal arts colleges which are trying to prevent an even larger skewing of the proportion of female and male undergraduates. That some colleges are trying to increase their male students is not news. It has been known for a little while now. The Civil Rights Commission is investigating. But as some of my colleagues have pointed out, one of the strategies for male recruitment entails adding sports teams for men. But adding men's teams would likely result in adding women's teams in order to retain or achieve Title IX compliance. So now we have to talk about--as if we ever really stop!--whether Title IX should be altered. All in order to get more men into liberal arts colleges.

Inside Higher Ed has some more details on the investigation and the Title IX issues involved. It quotes both blogger Fat Louie from Women's Sports Blog and Erin Buzuvis from the Title IX Blog. So yea for blogs getting some press.

In her own post on the issue, Buzuvis points out all the problems with this plan of adding sports as a recruitment tool including the fact that it assumes that all men are interested in playing sports and/or that they are inherently more interested than women.

And here is the post from Women's Sports Blog to whom I am grateful for mustering the appropriate amount of cyncism this week so I don't have to.