UM Law hosts panel on changing the rules of the Title IX game

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Apr 25, 2003 by Lawrence Hurley

As advocates of Title IX wait nervously for a Department of Education decision on whether the 30-year-old equal opportunities program will be radically changed, experts on the subject gathered yesterday at the University of Maryland School of Law to discuss the issue.

The event was organized to promote the law school's Women, Leadership and Equality Program, now entering the end of its first year.

The program's director, visiting professor Paula Monopoli, said just prior to the event yesterday that the intention was to "foster balanced and well-informed debate on the issue," with the emphasis on the intellectual rather than political arguments.

The panelists discussed the implications of the report on Title IX issued in February by the Secretary of Education's Commission on Opportunity in Athletics.

The commission recommended that compliance procedures relating to athletics could be relaxed, prompting a chorus of disapproval from Title IX supporters, including two of the commission members who did not agree with the majority's decision.

To add to the debate, two members of yesterday's panel, William Duncan, assistant professor at the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University, and Suzanne Sangree, visiting professor at West Virginia University College of Law, will write papers on Title IX in the coming weeks.

Their work will be published in the fall issue of "Margins," a law journal on race and gender published at the law school.

Among the panelists was a member of the commission, Rita Simon, who is a professor at the Washington School of Law at American University.

She endorses the conclusions reached by the commission, and claimed that opponents had exaggerated the affects the proposals would have if enacted upon.

"If the wishes of the commission are followed, Title IX will continue to play an important role in providing equal opportunities," she added.

Also on the panel was Jocelyn Samuels, vice-president of the Washington-based National Women's Law Center, one of the groups advocating for the program to be left unchanged.

She said it is important to hold events like yesterday's to keep the issue in the public eye while educating people about the benefits of Title IX.

The commission's report, she claimed, was set up to recommend changes to a program which "has been upheld by every court that has looked at it."

"They had the idea that there is discrimination against men, so rather than looking at whether there is still discrimination against women, the commission focused on that," Samuels said.

U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige has not yet revealed whether he will act on the recommendations made by the commission.

Yesterday's seminar was the first in a series of annual events that will be hosted by the Women, Leadership and Equality Program.

Monopoli explained that the program was founded on the premise that "the generation of women who led great strides in equality was getting older and there was a gap to be filled."