President Obama Repealed Bush’s Title IX Policy

By: Charles S. Mombo

Malcolm X College Lady Hawks Photo Source:malcolmx.ccc.edu

On Tuesday, President Obama repealed George Bush's policy that required colleges and universities to rely on an e-mail survey as a scale for measuring women's interest in sports.

Title IX, first enacted in 1972, mandates that educational institutions receiving federal funds can't discriminate in athletics by gender.

The Education Department's Office of Civil Rights said that the George W. Bush-era policy violated nondiscriminatory methods of assessing student interest in athletics. The repealed policy was enacted in 2005. A 1996 guideline from the Education Department had said that surveys can't be the only method of measuring interest in a sport. The National Collegiate Athletic Association had long objected to the method and welcomed the announcement.

The survey based on the 2005 policy was sent only to women and measured their interest in sports. If not many filled it out, schools were allowed to conclude that they lacked interest in sports.

While speaking at a George Washington University event, Vice President Joe Biden announced the changes on behalf of the Obama's Administration. Biden said, “Ending the single-survey method was intended to make sure that schools use more thorough tests to ensure fair participation of both sexes in athletics.” He also added, "We are going to make sure women in colleges are given the opportunities in the colleges that they deserve,"

According to Danielle Green-Byrd, the Assistant Athletic Director at Malcolm X College in Chicago, ”Thanks to long standing policy, Title IX has afforded my generation and generations to follow the opportunity to play on a level playing field. Playing basketball at the University of Notre Dame helped me develop life skills that I used in the next stage of my life.”

Green-Byrd also added, “Currently, Malcolm X College offers Men's and Women's basketball programs but the institution is looking to add Women's Volleyball and Men's Soccer to meet the interest of a growing student body.”

The NCAA's website is reporting that the number of female athletes at member institutions rose from 157,740 in 2000-01 to 182,503 in 2008-09. The number of male athletes rose from 217,114 to 244,267, a slightly larger rise than that seen among women athletes.