Title IX: McGraw plays role on committee
By: JOE HETTLER
Sports Editor
When a representative of the White House called Muffet McGraw early last summer, the Irish coach thought her husband was playing a joke on her.
But it was no joke when President Bush appointed McGraw to a 15-member committee called the Commission on Opportunity in Athletics in late June 2002. The group was to consider two-dozen recommendations concerning the opportunities for male and female student-athletes at college and evaluate the Title IX law.
Title IX has been a controversial issue since it was implemented in 1972. It states that colleges and universities must have an equal percentage of men and women playing sports as the percentage of men and women enrolled in the school. This law has been criticized for hurting male sports while praised for improving female participation in athletics.
The commission was supposed to suggest ways to improve the current law.
"Our charge was to listen to anybody that wanted to come to any of four town hall meetings across the country and hear anyone that had experiences with Title IX," McGraw said. "We were supposed to listen, gather information and from that information make recommendations."
The commission started with 24 recommendations at the end of the four town hall meetings, and passed 22. McGraw said about half of the recommendation were general, while the other 11 were specific to changing the law.
One proposal said that schools should have 50 percent male athletes and 50 percent female athletes, no matter what percentage of men and women attended the institution. That proposal tied at seven votes apiece.
McGraw said she voted against that issue because she didn't want to lose opportunities.
The committee also voted on whether to keep and clarify the Title IX law. That recommendation passed with a unanimous 15-0 vote.
"We wanted to clarify [the law] for everybody," McGraw said. "That passed 15-0, so it was interesting that kind of leaving it alone, but clarifying it a little bit was the widely accepted solution."
One final recommendation that the committee discussed involved interest surveys and what part they played in deciding how many men and women participate in each sport. McGraw and the committee agreed that it would not be wise to base the number of participants just on an interest survey.
"Women have not always known they were interested in sports," McGraw said. "Look at the crew team. We had 140 women go out for the crew team, when probably 139 of them didn't row in high school. So I think there's a great example of how women are interested."
McGraw also expressed concern at the meeting for walk-ons. Under Title IX, walk-ons are counted in the percentage of men and women in each sport. But the committee recommended that walk-ons not be counted in these percentages.
"We as a committed group didn't think that was fair, so we voted that walk-ons not even be counted in that proportion," McGraw said.
The group made their final recommendations Jan. 31 and submitted them to Secretary of Education Rod Paige.
All Sports Stories for Friday, February 7, 2003
