By Selwyn Duke
Imagine that you're a young girl who attends dance school and aspires to perform in the Bolshoi. Since yours is a typical dance school, the majority of your fellow students are also young ladies. Now, let's say that a light bulb went off in the heads of a bunch of radical-egalitarian social-engineers in the federal government, and they decided that the dearth of boys in dance schools was indicative of discrimination. And let's say that they decided that the only way to rectify this problem was to mandate that the schools achieve student bodies that are proportional in terms of sex to the population at large. In other words, since roughly 51% of children are male, these institutions would have to ensure that 51% of their student bodies were also. So, in an effort to comply the schools gear their advertising toward boys - to no avail. Then, the schools entertain the possibility of offering scholarships to boys, but this presents them with two problems: firstly, it's like trying to sell mice to elephants - most boys are partial to more macho pursuits. Secondly, the schools realize that they simply can't afford to fund enough boys' participation to conform to the proportionality model. Thus, so that they can avoid incurring the wrath of their heavy-handed bureaucrat tormentors, the schools do the only thing they can do: they eliminate girls from their programs until proportionality is realized. And you are one of the lasses who receive the boot. What's worse is that you can't find another dance school that will let you enroll - you are out in the cold. You're a ship without a port - your dreams have been shattered.
The above story is of course fiction. But there's another tale with a similar storyline playing itself out all across America - and it quite sadly, is real. What I'm referring to is that in colleges and universities from sea to shining sea boys are being consistently denied access to sporting opportunities for no other reason than the fact that they're male. The origin of this problem lay with a pernicious misinterpretation and misapplication of a piece of legislation known as "Title IX." Signed into law in 1972 by President Nixon, Title IX states that any school that receives federal money for any purpose whatsoever cannot discriminate on the basis of sex. Enter the law of unintended consequences - like so much federal legislation, Title IX is sufficiently ambiguous so as to allow agenda-driven people to co-opt it to serve their own ends. In the early 1990's, this finally happened.
It was at this time that officials in the Justice Department of the Clinton Administration decided to impose what they call "statistical proportionality" in the sphere of scholastic sports. What this means is that what is a slight variation on the policy in the fictional story above is being rammed down the throats of virtually every school in the United States. For, the Injustice Department mandate states that the percentage of a school's athletes who are female must be congruent with that of the student body. So, if a school is 55% female, then 55% of its athletes must also be. However, these schools have encountered the same problems as those in my above story: for one thing, girls just aren't as interested in playing sports. In fact, a survey at Brown University found that while 51% of the students were female, only 40% of those interested in playing varsity sports were. For this reason, they simply can't accommodate all the boys and all the girls who want to participate in sports and end up with equal numbers of both sexes. Secondly, these institutions just can't afford to fund enough gratuitous girls' programs to satisfy their Washington D.C. masters. Consequently, the schools, which like government money the way bees like honey, are instituting a slash and burn policy vis a vis boys' sports programs.
And boys' sports programs have been dropping like flies, innocent victims of indifferent or perhaps even hostile policy makers. For instance, more than 350 wrestling teams have been eliminated nationwide; New Mexico State University is cutting its men's swimming and indoor track programs; the University of Cincinnati cut out men's tennis, men's indoor track and the coed rifle team, and UCLA and the University of Miami eliminated its men's swimming and diving teams - the latter being the program that cultivated diving great Greg Louganis. Needless to say, this is just a small sampling of Title IX's trail of destruction; in total thus far 20,000 male athletes nationwide have seen their teams go the way of the Dodo.
Of course, even insanity such as this has its defenders - there are people to whom the fact that boys are far more inclined to play sports means nothing. Reality means nothing; the fact that the sexes make different lifestyle choices means nothing. To these enlightened thinkers the sexes must be the same and that's that. But, what's truly damnable is not the fact that nuts like this exist, but rather, the fact that the rest of us allow them to hold sway when we wouldn't for a second tolerate similar treatment of most any other group. And this thinking could be applied to other groups - just consider the following example. According to the NCAA Minority Opportunities and Interest Committee, 51 percent of college athletes are black and only 49 percent are white. Now, let's say we applied the Title IX logic to this situation and mandated that the races' representation in college sports had to be congruent with that of the overall student body. This would mean that we'd have to eliminate black athletes until whites accounted for the vast majority of all the athletes. Pray tell, what do you think the reaction would be if this was done? I'll tell you what would happen: Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would come out from under their rocks and scream racism, and the person who conjured up the idea would find himself with a reputation akin to that of a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Of course, the authors of the Title IX lunacy need not fear any such condemnation - it's fashionable to discriminate against boys, you see.
As unjust a state of affairs as this is, believe it or not the worst is probably yet to come. I say this because Title IX's scope is not limited to the athletic arena; in fact, it makes no mention of sports whatsoever - it only states that there can be no discrimination on the basis of sex - the rest is open to interpretation. What this means is that the very same quota paradigm could be applied to academics, like the hard sciences for instance, where boys also outnumber girls. In fact, Bill Clinton intended to do just that toward the end of his last term; the fact that it's not a fait accompli is perhaps only because he was, well...let's say...otherwise engaged.
To be fair though, blame for this travesty of justice cannot be laid completely at the feet of Slick Willie, his Lady Macbeth and her radical feminist ilk. The fact of the matter is that President Bush could have ended this with the stroke of a pen, but has instead allowed this unjust federal intrusion to continue unabated. Part of the reason is no doubt that government programs and policies are the only exception to the age-old rule that it's easier to destroy than create. Regardless though, there's a phrase for this kind of inaction: bad governance. Any politician of any persuasion whatsoever who is unwilling to address this egregious wrong head-on quite simply doesn't deserve our vote. Contact your Congressmen and Senators.
At this juncture I have to say that I always find it to be the height of hypocrisy when people start talking about equality between the sexes in sports. Whenever the equality police perceive that there is a barrier to girls' access to a sporting opportunity, they claim that the imperatives of equality dictate that it must be torn down. The problem with this is that they are simply using this tactic when it's convenient, while at the same time advocating a system that is inherently unequal. What am I talking about? Well, there's no equality when women have their own separate teams, leagues and circuits, and the very fact that they do is an admission that they are not equal in that sphere. Equality is this: everyone competes on the same playing fields and the cream rises to the top - it's that simple. If the equality-on-the-brain types aren't willing to institute this kind of a system, then their equality argument has no credibility and their talk is just that - talk.
But while that's the big picture, the aforementioned hypocrisy is evident even in the little one. Sports is the only area in which Title IX proportionality has been enforced, and is it any coincidence that it's just about the ONLY area where boys outnumber girls? The shameful truth is that in all the areas where the shoe is on the other foot, non-sport extra-curricular activities for instance, not even a thought is given to proportionality. So much for equality. So, I have a proposition for the politically correct equality police: if you really believe that this interpretation of Title IX is correct and just, then let's apply this EXACT same standard across the board. Let's be consistent and apply proportionality to ALL areas of education, including the female dominated ones. Now, since I know many of these folks could double their IQs with one serving of fish, I'm going to provide some guidance. I'm going to help them strike the ultimate blow in this endeavor by identifying what is perhaps the best example of an offense against proportionality. You know, amigos, 56% of all undergraduate students are girls - so, do you know what I'm thinking? I bet you do - I'm thinking that we have to do something about this. If necessary, let's deny some girls entrance into college so as to ensure that boys will constitute 51% of all college students. After all, if such a disparity is truly indicative of discrimination this MUST be done whenever one manifests itself. It's quite simply wrong to enforce proportionality when girls are in the minority but not when boys are - this unequal treatment under the law cannot be justified. So, I challenge you, left-wing social-engineers, to prove to me that you believe your own rhetoric. I challenge you to apply this consistently or not at all. I challenge you to demonstrate that this is truly about equality and not just part of a feminist crusade against the sons of America. I challenge these puppeteers, but call me cynical, I won't hold my breath waiting for them to pick up the gauntlet.
