Monday, September 22, 1997 Effects of Title IX felt at UCLA,
Northridge WOMEN: Gender ratios, budgets force schools to cease
support of teams
By Steve Kim
Daily Bruin Contributor
Gender equity laws have once again become a hot issue this
summer as they influenced Cal State Northridge’s termination of
four men’s sports programs: swimming, volleyball, soccer and
baseball. Budget deficits and athlete gender-ratio issues prompted
the university to drop the very popular and successful teams. Only
weeks later, public and student pressures prodded the school to
obtain a loan to salvage some of the teams.
Title IX of the 1972 Educational Amendments Act says that no
person shall be excluded from participation in any educational
program or activity on the basis of sex. Title IX was conceived
with the purpose of creating more opportunities. In an effort to
raise much-needed female participation opportunities in sports
programs while considering limited budget, there has been a trend
of colleges sacrificing men’s programs in order to finance women’s
teams.
Northridge’s recent turmoil calls to mind a similar situation
that happened at UCLA. A chancellor-commissioned task force
committee decided in 1993 to cease support of men’s swimming and
men’s and women’s gymnastics after the ’93-’94 school year.
Title IX implications ultimately saved women’s gymnastics, but
the men’s teams were still terminated in order to decrease the
budget deficit and help balance the gender ratio among
student-athlete participants. To compensate for the drastic
decision, UCLA decided to honor the scholarships of student
athletes who had already committed to their terminated sports.
Meanwhile, the women’s soccer program was given the go-ahead one
year prior to the committee’s assembly. Women’s water polo was
added a few years later to begin in the spring ’95 season.
"We’ve been on the cutting edge of adding women’s teams," said
Mark Dellins, an associate director of the UCLA Intercollegiate
Athletics department. "As women’s soccer became an emerging sport,
we added it. We did the same for women’s water polo."
It’s a different story, however, for the two dropped men’s
sports. Former UCLA head coach Ron Ballatore now coaches swimming
at the University of Florida at Gainesville. Without a coach and a
serious intercollegiate program, many of the swimmers opted to
train at other colleges.
Gymnastics coaches Art Shurlock and Yefim Furman, however, have
decided to continue their coaching here, even though they are no
longer supported promotionally or financially by the athletics
department. Thus, many gymnasts still train here and successfully
compete in club, national and international competitions.
"Dropping sports is not something that we wanted to do," said
Dellins. "All of our programs produce national-caliber teams and
athletes. The problem was a question of resources. At some point,
when we had no more resources, there had to be a decision made. It
wasn’t one that we made lightly, and it wasn’t one everybody wanted
to make. But we feel we did it with enough time where the student
athletes involved were allowed to weigh their options."
Currently, the athletics department no longer operates under a
deficit, according to Dellins, due in part to donations and
increased ticket and media revenues for football and
basketball.
According to Betsy Stephenson, also an associate director of
Intercollegiate Athletics, UCLA’s ’96-’97 student-athlete ratio was
61 males to 39 females, which is a considerable improvement from
the ’92-’93 ratio of 71 males to 29 females.
"UCLA is committed to improving and expanding opportunities for
women in collegiate athletics," said Stephenson, "and that’s been
evidenced by the addition of two women’s sports teams within the
last five years."
The gender ratio of UCLA undergraduates in the ’96-’97 school
year was 48 percent male to 52 percent female. Theoretically, the
gender ratio of student-athlete participants should reflect that of
the student body.
While that goal is still being pursued, both Stephenson and
Dellins hinted that there are discussions of adding a new women’s
team in the future. In the following two-part profile, the Daily
Bruin provides updates of the women’s soccer and men’s gymnastics
teams, four years after their respective turning points. Women’s
soccer debuted in Fall ’93. The same year, men’s gymnastics was
told it would be terminated from intercollegiate athletics. Neither
team had any direct influence on the other; this isn’t a story of
one team’s loss leading to another team’s gain. They are both
successful, separate organizations which happened to concurrently
undergo major changes in their programs, coaches and athletes
within the last several years.