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The News Journal. Wilmington, Delaware. Contact Us Place Ad Advertising Subscribe News Archives C... JMU's cuts draw heat i

Submitted by admin on Tue, 2007-04-24 11:00.

James Madison will shutter 10 teams -- seven men's, three women's -- on July 1. The school said the move will bring it into compliance with Title IX, the federal law passed 35 years ago that bans sex discrimination at schools receiving federal funds.

•Women's groups decry JMU for saying the cuts are motivated primarily by Title IX. They say that unfairly foments resentment toward, and resistance to, the law.

•Equity in Athletics (EIA), a new advocacy group based in Roanoke, Va., plans to seek an injunction reinstating the men's and women's teams. EIA said it soon will add JMU to the suit it filed last month against the U.S. Department of Education. That suit seeks to invalidate the three-part test long at the heart of Title IX's underlying regulations.

After the cuts, 61 percent of its athletes will be women, 39 percent men. That's called proportionality, one of three ways schools can comply with Title IX's participation requirements.

"A program that sponsors football and has a high female population is going to have a difficult time," said Jeff Bourne, JMU's athletic director since 1999.

•Having a continuing history of expanding opportunities for the underrepresented gender, almost always women. Adding a team protects a school for perhaps five years.

•Meeting the interests and abilities of the women on campus. Bourne said two thriving women's club teams at JMU want varsity status, demonstrating interest and ability; he declines to name them.

"We did not feel in a position to add" teams to satisfy the second or third tests, Bourne said, because JMU had 28 teams -- 13 men's and 15 women's. Few schools sponsor that many outside of Ohio State and Stanford (which have budgets that dwarf JMU's) and the Ivy League (which offers no athletic scholarships).

"We looked at the three prongs of Title IX, and we were not in compliance under any," Bourne said. "We had no defense and we felt the most prudent action was to devise a plan that would put us in compliance with the first prong."

Donna Lopiano, CEO of the Women's Sports Foundation, said schools that cut men's teams do so for budget and competitive reasons, not for Title IX.

JMU plays NCAA Division I-AA football; the Dukes won the national title in 2004. Men's basketball plays in the tough CAA; the league's George Mason made the NCAA Tournament Final Four in 2005-06, and Virginia Commonwealth beat Duke in the first round this year.

That money, he said, will be reinvested in scholarships in the remaining women's sports. He said none will go toward football's $4.2 million budget.

"I'll believe it when I see it," Lopiano said. She concedes JMU's plan puts it in compliance with participation requirements, but she promises increased scrutiny to see if the school complies with other facets of Title IX, such as equitable facilities and scholarships.

JMU is dropping men's archery, cross country, gymnastics, indoor track, outdoor track, swimming and wrestling. Women's archery, gymnastics and fencing teams also are being discontinued.

With 28 sports presently, JMU is tied for seventh among NCAA Division I schools in number of teams. That posed "an insurmountable challenge," said Joseph Damico, director of the JMU board of visitors, when the school announced the cuts last fall.

University of Delaware athletic director Edgar Johnson said he is pained by the JMU cuts. But he sees them as a sign of the times because of the rising costs in athletics.

"My first reaction was shock," Johnson said. "My second reaction was sadness. Participation opportunities being denied to both men and women is always unfortunate, because I always value intercollegiate athletics and intercollegiate competition for what they do for the individual as far as growth and leadership opportunities, self-discipline and those kinds of things."

Delaware conducts 23 sports -- 11 for men and 12 for women. UD dropped wrestling in 1991 as a cost-cutting measure, said Johnson, though the move had collateral Title IX benefits. Delaware has since added women's soccer and women's rowing.

"Hardly anybody meets proportionality," Johnson said of one aspect of the three-part Title IX test. "You meet [Title IX standards] by having a history of expansion of opportunities and improving facilities. That's what we hang our hat on."

"Nobody is saying Title IX isn't needed," she said. "I mean, it was so needed in the '70s. And it's definitely got girls to where they are now. But it's fighting the interpretation of it. Schools are abusing it.

"Times change, and you adapt to those changes. And if more women are going to college than men, and males want to participate in sports, why would we say no? That doesn't make sense."

"It's nothing against women at all," she said. "I'm a female athlete, and I love to compete. At the same time, Title IX now is almost reverse discrimination."

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