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Virginia Delegates Rip
James Madison University for Cuts Tied to Title IX
Think this might work for
us?
BY HARRY MINIUM THE
VIRGINIAN-PILOT • Reach Harry Minium at (757) 446-2371 or harry.minium@pilotonline.com
RICHMOND — Members of the House of Delegates
Education Committee threatened to cut James Madison University’s funding on
Wednesday to send the school a message about its decision to eliminate several
men’s sports to come into compliance with Title IX.
Although the threats of budget cuts have little chance
of being implemented, they accentuate just how angry some legislators are with
JMU.
“JMU has botched the way they handled this” and
instead “cut the legs out from under 144 athletes,” said Del. Steven Landes,
R-Augusta County.
Landes was among several delegates threatening to attach
strings to JMU’s budget requests if officials don’t reconsider. Del. John
Reid, RHenrico County, was another, saying, “In an effort to be equitable,
James Madison has been inequitable to these students.”
JMU announced this fall it would eliminate 10 of its 28
sports teams — seven of them men’s teams — mainly for Title IX reasons.
Title IX is part of a 1972 federal law designed to guarantee equity for men and
women.
Largely because it fields football, JMU has a higher
percentage of male athletes than it does male students. Republican and
Democratic delegates took turns pummeling JMU not only for making the cuts, but
for not providing athletes, their parents and alumni any chance to participate
in the decision.
JMU officials, at the advice of Attorney General Robert
McDonnell, declined an invitation to appear at the hearing. David Black, a
deputy secretary for the federal Department of Education Office of Civil Rights,
appeared at the request of committee chairman Robert Tata, R-Virginia Beach.
Black criticized JMU, saying school officials had other
options. “We’re not happy when schools eliminate sports” to come into
compliance, he said.
James Snyder, whose son, James Snyder Jr. is a freshman
cross country and track runner at JMU and is among the 144 athletes losing their
sport, drove from Philadelphia to speak to the committee.
He said his son was recruited with the promise that the
school would continue the sport and just months into his freshman season, was
told he needed to go elsewhere if he wanted to keep participating.
“What happened at JMU was not the intent of Title
IX,” he said. “It couldn’t be.”
Tata and Reid expressed frustration that federal law
makes no exceptions for football, which at a Division I-AA school such as JMU
claims 63 scholarships alone.
Black responded that making an exception for football
was rejected when the law was passed in 1972, and his department must enforce
the law as written. Reid said smaller schools such as JMU are struggling
financially to provide scholarships for women in non-revenue sports.
“Those schools don’t make money on football,” Reid
said. “They lose money.”
Old Dominion University is in the process of beginning
I-AA football, but ODU president Roseann Runte, who was not at the hearing, said
the school does not have Title IX issues.
“We are in compliance with Title IX now and will be
after we add football,” Runte said.
ODU is adding three women’s sports teams around the
same time as football starts. Tata said he wishes JMU could have similarly
planned for the future.
“I feel sorry for the kids at JMU,” he said. “They
don’t deserve this.”
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DROPPED
TEAMS
2006
Women's Lacrosse Team
Swimming
and Diving
and
Track
and Field
|
