Title Ix

WASHINGTON -- Supreme Court justices, worried about creation of a national code of conduct for schoolchildren, openly resisted yesterday the idea that federal law against sexual harassment should apply when one student taunts or molests another.Justice Anthony M. Kennedy summed up the reaction of the doubting members of the court, saying the "necessary consequence" of extending "Title IX" to student misbehavior "will be a federal code of conduct in every classroom in the country."His reaction seemed to be shared by, among others, Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Stephen G. Breyer.

For full disclosure's sake, I am a 1968 graduate of what is now Towson University (and a 1974 graduate of Morgan State University). I taught high school for 14 years and founded an advertising agency that has a sports specialty. Our company has done sports ticket sales campaigns for 43 university programs in 24 states over a 30 year period - including Towson - as well as several pro teams, including all of the local franchises. To say that specializing in college athletics is not a way to build a big media billing agency is an understatement.

"HUGE" IS THE only word to describe the impact of American women winning the Women's World Cup Soccer championship.I was born in 1940 and grew up female in the middle of this century. My generation was constantly told, "Women are not team players." We saw many women individually break through the glass ceiling, from Margaret Thatcher to Billie Jean King. But there was no cracking of the conventional wisdom that we could be divas but not trusted team members.That conventional wisdom, which exploded in front of our eyes by an incoming missile called the U.S. women's soccer team, should blast through some of the final barriers against women assuming more leadership roles.

Towson University president Maravene Loeschke's defense of cutting the men's soccer and baseball teams was less than honest ("Towson president says cutbacks of baseball, soccer painful but necessary," March 15). Not once did she mention football, a major expense for a university and the real reason for cutting other men's sports. Instead she did a great disservice to her gender by using the smoke screen of Title IX as a factor. Just to mention equality for women's sports implicates Title IX, but she is talking about pennies and this is wrong.

Title IX notice from Howard schoolsTitle IX of the 1972 Education Amendments states there is to be no discrimination on the basis of sex in educational programs or employment policies and practices. Sexual harassment, a form of sex discrimination, is covered under the provisions of Title IX.The Department of Education of Howard County is extending notification that it complies with the regulations set forth under Title IX.Any questions regarding Title IX should be directed to Dr. Jacqueline Brown, coordinator, Office of Human Relations, 313-6679.

CHICAGO - One argument for the University of Michigan's affirmative action program was that universities should be free to choose the students they need to achieve their goals. For the courts to tell schools they can't consider race, we were advised, not only would hurt minority applicants but also would impoverish the campus experience and intrude on academic freedom. Outsiders should therefore pause before mucking around in such matters. A brief submitted by Yale, Harvard and other elite schools said these policies "have served compelling pedagogical interests" and urged the Supreme Court "not to eviscerate the capacity of universities ... to determine how to fulfill their profound responsibility."

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court, told that students' sexual harassment of other students is a serious and fast-growing problem, stepped into the matter yesterday by agreeing to rule on the duty of school boards or college administrators to act.The court took on the case of a fifth-grade girl in Forsyth, Ga., and her mother, who complained to school officials about repeated sexual gestures and vulgar comments by a boy in the class.After school officials failed to deal with the complaints, the mother and daughter sued the Monroe County school board, contending that student-on-student harassment is illegal under the Title IX federal civil rights law.The Supreme Court added that case to its docket for a decision within the next year.

BOSTON -- Think of it as the Field of Dreams Theory of Social Change: If you build it, they will come.In this case, the tool used by the dreamers and builders was Title IX. And the athletes who have showed up on the playing fields newly created are not mythological figures. They are myth-shattering girls and women.Monday, we will officially mark the 25th anniversary of the landmark legislation that banned sex discrimination in education. In honor of the event, the president quite properly reminded a pre-silver-anniversary crowd assembled in the White House Tuesday that the federal legislation helped women in all areas of academic life, not just athletics.

WHAT MESSAGE is the Bush administration trying to send about women in sports? At the same time that it supported an important extension of Title IX - the 1972 law that prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded schools and colleges - to cover whistleblowers, it seems to want to undermine enforcement. The Department of Education posted a surprise notice on its Web site last month that was called a "clarification" of how schools can demonstrate that they are following the law. Instead of clarity, however, the department has generated unnecessary confusion and could threaten 30 years of progress in expanding athletic opportunities for young women.

I stood in front of associate professor Barbara Osborne's sports law class at the University of North Carolina last week. The subject was the seldom-talked-about disparity of power and privilege between black and white women in the sports industry. The timing was fitting. This year is the 35th anniversary of Title IX, the congressional legislation that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any educational program that receives federal financial assistance. A week earlier, hundreds attended a convention in Cleveland, the site of the women's basketball Final Four, to celebrate and discuss Title IX, the law that changed the sports landscape in America.