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FSEC told UB in compliance with Title IX
By DONNA LONGENECKER
Reporter Assistant Editor
While other universities struggle with the ramifications of Title IX, the law that ensures gender equity in college sports programs, UB appears to be doing just fine, according to a report on the issue yesterday to the Faculty Senate Executive Committee by Judith Adams-Volpe, chair of the Intercollegiate Athletics Board (IAB), and Nan Harvey, associate athletic director.
The fact that UB's undergraduate population is weighted toward men—55 percent of undergraduates are men, 45 percent are women—makes it easier for the university to be in compliance with Title IX," said Adams-Volpe, who is director of university and external relations for the Arts & Science Libraries.
"It's a bit of an oddity, she noted. "We do not represent the national trend around the country," which is a female undergraduate population of about 55 percent "It's not as difficult for us to be in compliance with Title IX regulations because we do have fewer women on campus than men.
"If it were the other way around (if UB enrolled more women than men), the university could be forced to either create new programs for women or scale back men's programs," she said.
For now, it's unlikely the university will do the latter since the trend at UB has been to try to remain compliant with Title IX by enhancing or adding women's sports programs.
Colleges and universities must meet one of three criteria in order to demonstrate compliance with Title IX. They must offer the same proportion of varsity positions to women as there are women in the full-time, undergraduate student body—in other words, the distribution of funding for sports should mirror the student population. Areas of focus for compliance are athletic participation, operating expenses, recruiting expenses and scholarship distribution for Division 1 teams, said Adams-Volpe.
The other two criteria are that institutions either must have a "history of and continuing practice" of expanding opportunities for women or they must be able to show they are "fully and effectively accommodating the interests and abilities of women on campus."
As part of the requirement for joining the Mid-America Conference, explained Adams-Volpe, the university added varsity baseball, and in turn, to stay compliant with Title IX, it also increased participation in women's crew, both of which are Division 1-level teams.
"The division (of athletics) has been very careful and has directed and focused budget allocations at UB to preserve the men's teams, as well as to achieve gender equity on our campus," said Adams-Volpe. "Many schools have had to drop some sports, like wrestling, swimming and tennis. We have not had to do that here because of the careful budgeting process at the Division of Athletics and the care with which we to try to preserve all of our teams."
Each year, the Division of Athletics prepares an Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act Report, which is required by Title IX regulations from the U.S. Department of Education. The report only focuses on Division 1 athletics.
Adams-Volpe said a recent Title IX peer review of UB's athletics programs was successful. "They saw no problems at all. I think, basically, we can assume that the peer review committee saw us as completely compliant. They had no issues for us to focus on at this time," she told senators.