In an attempt to actually keep my promise of posting once a week, I'm gonna post a little something that caught my eye a few days ago.
Normally, I would just leave Title IX stuff to the Title IX blog... but this story was so interesting to me because the discourse around these decisions to cut costs in an economic downturn is fascinating (for lack of a better word) to me.
In an article describing Arizona State's decision to drop it's men's wrestling and swimming teams, I found the following quote that made me stop in my tracks:
Arizona State men’s swimming coach Mike Chasson is the latest victim of this numbers crunch.
“I think Title IX has been incredibly important, but basically it gives universities an excuse to drop men’s sports,” said Chasson, who also coaches the women’s team. “That’s the bottom line.”
I feel for Chasson here. I understand that it must suck to have lost his team. But what I find interesting about this type of discourse is it pretends that men are under attack when what is really happening here is the correcting of long standing inequality in sport.
There's really no need to belabor this point -- it's been made over and over again. However, as long as men feel entitled to their sports even at the expense of women's sports, we're going to have a huge problem navigating the politics of Title IX...unless of course this was addressed at the level of federal oversight... by a new administration...
