Last week, Katie Thomas of the New York Times ran a breathless expose of the devious actions that many colleges have taken to escape the mandate of gender equality under Title IX of the Civil Rights Act. The gist of her complaint is contained in the article’s headline: "College Teams, Relying on Deception, Undermine Gender Equity."
Her article then details how various colleges have in effect packed their women’s teams with nonparticipating female athletes in order to increase the available spots for men who participate for real. Thomas led with the University of South Florida, where more than half of the 71 women on the cross-country team had never participated in any race for a team that some of them did not know they were on. Not to be outdone, such elite institutions as Cornell, Duke, and Texas A&M take advantage of a "loophole" to Title IX that counts as women the men who work out with female athletes in training.
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(photo credit: crmgucd)
