SAVE OU SPORTS.ORG

GO BOBCATS!

PETITION

Please sign our petition to save dropped OU sports. Click here. If your current circumstances or position with Ohio University do not require anonymity, we request that you sign with your name rather than as "Anonymous" as some have. Thank you and thanks to the Women's Lacrosse blog for setting up this petition.

Ohio University Alumni Association

OU Students have an active discussion going on in FaceBook.Com. Click here to go to FaceBook.Com and join in.

OU Student Newspaper "The Post Online"

Save James Madison University Sports.org

Taking Inside Higher Ed to the Mat

EMAIL CONTACT FOR THIS SITE: SaveOUSports ATgmailDOTcom

WOMEN U.S. SENATORS

Links directly to webmail pages of women U.S. Senators

Letter already written below and formatted to fit into each Senator's webmail form.

Elizabeth Dole - North Carolina

Claire McCaskill - Missouri - mccaskilltransition@mccaskill.senate.gov

Patty Murray - Washington

Instructions for emailing these U.S. Senators

It's easy!

Just copy the letter below,
Click on the Senator's link above,
Paste the letter into her webmail form,
Type her name in the salutation at the top and yours in the space at bottom of the cover letter - not all the way at the bottom,
Fill in the other info the form requests.......and then submit.

Here is the letter - Just select it and click on copy.

Subject: TITLE IX - Request your intervention in deeply flawed university decisions to drop Olympic and emerging sports programs using Title IX contrary to its original intent, action that reduces instead of increases women's opportunities.

Dear Senator (Type in Senator's Last Name Here):

The letter further below is being sent to Ohio's U.S., State, and Local political leadership asking for action to reverse a decision to cut four sports teams from Ohio University's (OU) Athletic Department. This is being done using TITLE IX as political cover for a purely financial decision so more money can be made available to "revenue sports."

Women's Lacrosse (fastest growing high school and college sport in the country), Men's Swimming and Diving (Olympic sport with 72 years of history at OU), and Men's Indoor and Outdoor Track and Field (Olympic sport with almost 100 years of history at OU) were cut.

We ask you to consider legislation to make it illegal to use Title IX as political cover for financial decisions that destroy student athletes' dreams as sports conferences, university presidents, and athletic directors succumb to the dollar lure of "big money" (read football and basketball) sports.

As our nation's top women leaders, we believe you are in a unique position to stop this corruption of a civil rights law. The U.S. Department of Education has repeatedly said that Title IX was never intended to be used as a convenient way to cut sports, but it is being used that way and will continue to be abused until our nation's leaders do something about it.

Please read the letter below and visit our website page on Title IX here http://www.saveousports.org/title_nine.htm to learn how Title IX is being used to divert money to "revenue sports" while destroying other women's and men's teams and decide for yourself if this trend is wrong.

We ask you to act before more universities misuse Title IX to reduce, instead of expand, sports opportunities for both women and men.

Thank you,

(Your Name Here)

PS: If you have a chance, please read the interesting article at this link:

http://www.saveousports.org/dads_aren't_just_football_fans.htm There are as many fathers as mothers angry at this misguided action by Ohio University.

Letter being sent to Ohio's political leadership:

Dear Governor Strickland,

U.S. Senator Voinovich,

U.S. Senator Brown,

U.S. Congressman Wilson (Congressional District includes Athens),

State Senator Padgett (Athens),

State Representative Stewart (Athens):

I believe the problem described below is so serious that it requires intervention by the highest levels of the Ohio State Government and Ohio's representatives at the national level. That is why I am writing to you, other state officials, Ohio's representatives in Congress, and many others. You can read all the information on it at:

www.SaveOUSports.org

I am writing to you and to others to express in the strongest possible terms my deep concern about a January 24, 2007 decision by the Ohio University Administration.

This decision was arrived at in secret during the 13-month period from December 2005 to January 24, 2007, during which, according to its own, now-published documents that can be found on our website, OU's administration formed and conducted secret, closed-door committee work to determine alternatives to remedy the Athletic Department's poor financial condition.

This closed-door committee's decision was announced to the student athletes and their coaches on January 24. None of these people had any advance warning that this might happen.

The decision was to terminate four OU varsity sports programs:

Men's Indoor and Outdoor Track and Field (Indoor and Outdoor Track and Field count as two teams) a team with almost 100 years of history at OU and an Olympic sport.
Women's Lacrosse -- The nation's fastest growing high school and collegiate sport.
Men's Swimming and Diving, a team with 72 years of history at OU and also an Olympic sport.

The OU administration violated its own and NCAA policies in the way it handled this process. No student government or student athlete representatives participated in the secret committee process that led to this decision. OU policies require these student officials' participation in such decision processes. NCAA policies require the following:

Page 3 of the "NCAA Division One Manual"

"2.2 The Principle of Student-Athlete Well-Being

2.2.6 Student-Athlete Involvement. [*] It is the responsibility of each member institution to involve student-athletes in matters that affect their lives. (Adopted 1/10/95)"

86 Student Athletes had their OU collegiate athletic careers taken from them without warning. At this late date in the academic year, freshmen and sophomore athletes are scrambling to transfer to other colleges to continue their careers. Junior athletes have almost no options -- most universities do not allow senior year transfers -- and this could be their last year of collegiate competition. They are devastated.

During the 13 months of this secret process, coaches of the dropped teams were apparently kept in the dark about this decision process and the possibility that their teams would be cut.

Acting in good faith as agents of OU, the coaches recruited high school seniors who, in good faith, accepted invitations and they are now at OU. These freshmen had other university options but were induced to come to a school which only a select few knew was secretly in the process of cutting their sports.

The Lacrosse team was less than three weeks away from starting its 2007 season when OU broke this news. So many underclasswomen have decided to sit out this season to retain NCAA eligibility so they can transfer to other schools that there are insufficient players to field a team. As a result, the team voted not to play this year. Senior athletes on the Women's Lacrosse Team played their last OU game last year but they didn't know it at the time.

This secret 13-month process prevented stakeholders with the most at stake from participating. If they had known in advance that their teams were in jeopardy, they could have worked together to save their teams and their OU athletic careers.

Outraged alumni have stated that they recently gave to a successful OU sports fundraising campaign without the knowledge that varsity sports might be cut.

The President of the OU National Capital Alumni Network, a prominent and generous donor to OU, expressed in an open letter to OU President Roderick McDavis his displeasure that the alumni were not asked to help save these teams. That letter can be found on our website at this link -- http://www.saveousports.org/ou_alumni_speak_out.htm

The decision was announced abruptly. Those affected had little or no time to react. It was announced during mid-term exams and only two and a half weeks from the next OU Board of Trustees meeting in Chillicothe on February 15-16, 2007. This decision by OU was, as far as we can determine, not on the Board's agenda. Nevertheless, it appeared on the agenda and the Board voted to uphold OU's decision.

We do not believe the Board of Trustees made this decision with full information. OU conducted this decision process over a period of 13 months. We had only 21 days to prepare our position. It also appears to us that the Board of Trustees chose not to investigate what we proved was grossly inaccurate information used by OU to arrive at this decision. We believe the Board had a responsibility to put this decision on hold until it can determine if this decision was made properly.

We worked hard to organize in the limited time we had. We scrambled to accumulate and study documentation so we could draft and present justification for retaining these teams.

Documentation provided by OU following request for public documents was incomplete. A particularly important document, an OU internal audit of the Athletic Department, contained only odd-numbered pages. When we received the remaining pages, we had less than a week to share it among our scattered groups before the Board meeting.

We believe information used to reach this decision was incomplete, inaccurate and spun with the help of a consultant to justify what the university had already decided perhaps as long as a year ago.

The exclusion of these groups worked to the detriment of a valid, equitable, respectable and thorough analytical decision-making process. One could hardly expect support of the decisions under the circumstances.

Decisions made behind closed doors by few seldom win the support or earn the respect of many.

The teams have a website at -- www.SaveOUSports.org -- where you can read all the information on this debacle at OU.

Official university documents are posted on our website at this link -- http://www.saveousports.org/documents_page.htm -- that explain the state of financial affairs in OU's Athletic Department.

Also posted on the website are news reports and other information explaining the deficient state of OU's finances in general.

The website also documents how the university still has very expensive and aggressive spending plans for favored sports despite financial problems. The Athletic Director explains that "most" of this funding comes from private donations for specific sports purposes yet OU is willing to provide substantial amounts of money from non-athletic university coffers funding for activities that benefit certain sports.

You can read this material at our website at this link -- http://www.saveousports.org/athletic_department's_plans_for_ou_sports.htm

OU President Roderick McDavis and OU Athletic Director Kirby Hocutt say that cutting these teams and 86 student athletes will save OU $685,000 a year.

However, as you can read in news reports posted on the website at this link -- http://www.saveousports.org/it's_party_time!!.htm -- OU somehow found $277,550 in its non-athletic budget coffers to pay for an Athletic Department budget shortfall when it flew 261 people to Mobile, Alabama and paid for their food and lodging to attend the GMAC Football Bowl just 17 days before it cut these teams for financial reasons.

This action calls into question the responsible management and oversight of OU's finances at many levels. It is difficult to conceive why OU would spend so much money it didn't have for so many people to attend an away football game when it was just weeks away from cutting 86 student athletes and their teams for financial reasons.

Again, these teams are:

Women's Lacrosse - The fastest growing high school and collegiate women's sport in the country whose conference schedule consistently includes national champions and NCAA playoff finalists.
Men's Swimming and Diving - A sport with an illustrious 72-year history at OU and currently has a serious Olympic contender.
Men's Track and Field - A sport with almost 100 years of history at OU and that produced NCAA hall of famers.

If you choose to contact OU's administration for an explanation of their side of this story, you will be told that Title IX of the 1972 Amendments of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requiring gender equity in publicly funded sports was also an important constraint in their decision.

This claim that OU was forced to cut teams for Title IX purposes does not hold up to objective scrutiny by national authorities who have already expressed their opinions publicly on this decision by OU's administration.

OU currently ranks 21st in Title IX compliance out of 119 NCAA Division One universities according to the Women's Sports Foundation, perhaps the leading advocate for Title IX adherence and national authority in sports and gender issues.

Public statements by nationally-recognized Title IX experts refuting the claim that Title IX also forces OU to take this course -- documented on our website at this link -- http://www.saveousports.org/reactions_to_ou_decision.htm -- include the NCAA, the Women's Sports Foundation, and the Executive Director of the College Swimming Coaches Association of America.

The teams have an online petition at the link below to save these varsity sports at OU -- http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/ohiouniversitysports/signatures-1.html

Over 2,500 students, athletes, parents, and alumni from all over Ohio and, the country, and alumni from other countries have signed it and the number is growing daily.

1,400 signatures on a separate petition were presented to the OU Board of Trustees at their February 2007 meeting.

All alumni chapters are weighing in with their displeasure. A disturbing number of these alumni announced on the petition that they will no longer contribute to Ohio University.

Stan Huntsman, an OU alumni member of the National Track and Field Hall of Fame is so incensed about this decision and the secretive process that led to it that he has publicly severed all ties with OU. He demanded that his plaque in the Ohio University Hall of Fame be removed immediately. He mailed his diploma back to OU President Roderick McDavis. A full report on his reaction may be found on our website at this link -- http://www.saveousports.org/the_backlash_begins.htm

OU's administration could have handled this situation much better and all of what is now transpiring could have been avoided.

The university could have explained well over a year ago, when President McDavis instructed the Athletic Director to bring the department's finances under control, that teams were in jeopardy and those teams, their parents, students and other supporters could have been brought into the process and given a chance to save them.

They were not given this opportunity because this decision affecting so many in a public institution was apparently arrived at by insiders behind closed doors.

We ask you to do the following:

Demand the teams be reinstated immediately and allowed to continue.
Use your authority to ensure that full investigations are conducted into OU's finances and the manner in which this decision damaging so many young lives was determined.
Call for OU to embark on a more comprehensive effort to explore all the options available by a less partisan group/committee than was apparently undertaken by the OU Athletic Department including input from outside sources who are not so closely tied to the interests of the sports that would benefit from the elimination of the “non-revenue” sports.

Stopping the unraveling of these teams now would also allow OU's vast alumni network time to mobilize to help raise funds to save these sports as some of its leadership has said it could.

SAVE OU SPORTS.ORG

GO BOBCATS!

LINKS

PETITION

MORE LINKS

OU Students have an active discussion going on in FaceBook.Com. Click here to go to FaceBook.Com and join in.

EMAIL CONTACT FOR THIS SITE: SaveOUSports ATgmailDOTcom

WOMEN U.S. SENATORS

Links directly to webmail pages of women U.S. Senators

Letter already written below and formatted to fit into each Senator's webmail form.

Barbara Boxer - California

Maria Cantwell - Washington

Hillary Clinton - New York

Susan Collins - Maine

Elizabeth Dole - North Carolina

Dianne Feinstein - California

Kay Bailey Hutchinson - Texas

Amy Klobuchar - Minnesota

Mary L. Landrieu - Louisiana

Blanche Lincoln - Arkansas

Claire McCaskill - Missouri - mccaskilltransition@mccaskill.senate.gov

Lisa Murkowski - Alaska

Patty Murray - Washington

Olympia J. Snowe - Maine

Debbie Stabenow - Michigan

Instructions for emailing these U.S. Senators

It's easy!

Just copy the letter below,

Click on the Senator's link above,

Paste the letter into her webmail form,

Type her name in the salutation at the top and yours in the space at bottom of the cover letter - not all the way at the bottom,

Fill in the other info the form requests.......and then submit.

Here is the letter - Just select it and click on copy.

I am writing to you and to others to express in the strongest possible terms my deep concern about a January 24, 2007 decision by the Ohio University Administration.

This closed-door committee's decision was announced to the student athletes and their coaches on January 24. None of these people had any advance warning that this might happen.

The decision was to terminate four OU varsity sports programs:

Men's Indoor and Outdoor Track and Field (Indoor and Outdoor Track and Field count as two teams) a team with almost 100 years of history at OU and an Olympic sport.

Women's Lacrosse -- The nation's fastest growing high school and collegiate sport.

Men's Swimming and Diving, a team with 72 years of history at OU and also an Olympic sport.

Page 3 of the "NCAA Division One Manual"

"2.2 The Principle of Student-Athlete Well-Being

2.2.6 Student-Athlete Involvement. [*] It is the responsibility of each member institution to involve student-athletes in matters that affect their lives. (Adopted 1/10/95)"

During the 13 months of this secret process, coaches of the dropped teams were apparently kept in the dark about this decision process and the possibility that their teams would be cut.

This secret 13-month process prevented stakeholders with the most at stake from participating. If they had known in advance that their teams were in jeopardy, they could have worked together to save their teams and their OU athletic careers.

Outraged alumni have stated that they recently gave to a successful OU sports fundraising campaign without the knowledge that varsity sports might be cut.

We worked hard to organize in the limited time we had. We scrambled to accumulate and study documentation so we could draft and present justification for retaining these teams.

We believe information used to reach this decision was incomplete, inaccurate and spun with the help of a consultant to justify what the university had already decided perhaps as long as a year ago.

The exclusion of these groups worked to the detriment of a valid, equitable, respectable and thorough analytical decision-making process. One could hardly expect support of the decisions under the circumstances.

Decisions made behind closed doors by few seldom win the support or earn the respect of many.

The teams have a website at -- www.SaveOUSports.org -- where you can read all the information on this debacle at OU.

Official university documents are posted on our website at this link -- http://www.saveousports.org/documents_page.htm -- that explain the state of financial affairs in OU's Athletic Department.

Also posted on the website are news reports and other information explaining the deficient state of OU's finances in general.

You can read this material at our website at this link -- http://www.saveousports.org/athletic_department's_plans_for_ou_sports.htm

OU President Roderick McDavis and OU Athletic Director Kirby Hocutt say that cutting these teams and 86 student athletes will save OU $685,000 a year.

Again, these teams are:

Women's Lacrosse - The fastest growing high school and collegiate women's sport in the country whose conference schedule consistently includes national champions and NCAA playoff finalists.

Men's Swimming and Diving - A sport with an illustrious 72-year history at OU and currently has a serious Olympic contender.

Men's Track and Field - A sport with almost 100 years of history at OU and that produced NCAA hall of famers.

If you choose to contact OU's administration for an explanation of their side of this story, you will be told that Title IX of the 1972 Amendments of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requiring gender equity in publicly funded sports was also an important constraint in their decision.

This claim that OU was forced to cut teams for Title IX purposes does not hold up to objective scrutiny by national authorities who have already expressed their opinions publicly on this decision by OU's administration.

OU currently ranks 21st in Title IX compliance out of 119 NCAA Division One universities according to the Women's Sports Foundation, perhaps the leading advocate for Title IX adherence and national authority in sports and gender issues.

The teams have an online petition at the link below to save these varsity sports at OU -- http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/ohiouniversitysports/signatures-1.html

Over 2,500 students, athletes, parents, and alumni from all over Ohio and, the country, and alumni from other countries have signed it and the number is growing daily.

1,400 signatures on a separate petition were presented to the OU Board of Trustees at their February 2007 meeting.

All alumni chapters are weighing in with their displeasure. A disturbing number of these alumni announced on the petition that they will no longer contribute to Ohio University.

OU's administration could have handled this situation much better and all of what is now transpiring could have been avoided.

They were not given this opportunity because this decision affecting so many in a public institution was apparently arrived at by insiders behind closed doors.

We ask you to do the following:

Demand the teams be reinstated immediately and allowed to continue.

Use your authority to ensure that full investigations are conducted into OU's finances and the manner in which this decision damaging so many young lives was determined.

Stopping the unraveling of these teams now would also allow OU's vast alumni network time to mobilize to help raise funds to save these sports as some of its leadership has said it could.

Please support us.

Thank you.

Respectfully,

(Your name here)

(Your OU affiliation here - graduating class, parent, fan, etc.)

DROPPED TEAMS

2006 Women's Lacrosse Team

Swimming and Diving

and

2.2.6 Student-Athlete Involvement. [] It is the responsibility of each member institution to involve student-athletes in matters that affect their lives. (Adopted 1/10/95)"*