Why Title IX means quotas

Andy writes:

It has remained a continuing mystery why the quota part of the three-part test has become so important under Title IX. Why can't colleges just satisfy one of the other prongs of the test?

The three parts of the test are:

(1) The quota test: proportionality in sports must substantially equal the proportionality enrolled.
(2) The school shows a history of continually upgrading the women's programs.
(3) The school shows that it meets the interests and abilities of female students.

In debates, feminists will frequently say that schools are free to meet prongs (2) or (3) without satisfying the quota.

The answer to this mystery was just provided in the case of Missouri State University this week. Like most colleges, it is losing money and needs to cut back programs to survive. It has no choice: it must cut some sports teams.

But by cutting just one women's sports team, the college has arguably disqualified itself from satisfying prongs (2) and (3) above. The college cut the women's sports team, leaving 7 women who wanted to play tennis without a team. (2) and (3) above are not in compliance.

So the college has to try to meet (1). The college therefore cut FOUR men's teams (tennis, indoor track, outdoor track and cross country), stranding 65 male athletes! That brought its percentage of female-to-male athletes to 51:49.

Too bad anyway. It's female:male enrollment percentage is 55:45. The feminists just sued under Title IX, and will probably force the struggling college to pay its astronomical attorneys fees. Full Post-Dispatch article below.

The bottom line is this: the quota part of the Title IX test is the only one available to schools that need to cut programs for financial reasons, which is a huge percentage of schools.

Here is the story.