First off, the real elephant in the room is college tuition. Tuition has risen faster than any other major line item for most families. Faster than autos, medical care...basically anything.
For example, in 1993, tuition at NW was $15,800, with room and board $5,200. By 2013 tuition had grown to $45,500 and is now $63,500 plus room/board, which is...are you sitting down? $18,000 or more. That's right it's now over $81,000 to go to college. Tuition alone has gone up 40% in the last 10 years. What a great value!
Now for their sports program. Last year they brought in about $112 million. The bulk of that is from the mens programs, mostly football and hoop. Ergo, men's sports generate the bulk of ticket sales.
Male programs received $12.4 million, with women's receiving $10.1. OMG! Honestly, who gives a crap. The whole college system is a colossal rip-off. The fact that some female athletes get slightly less when their male brethren are selling the tickets and bringing in the $$$ isn't the end of the world. What is? Colleges boosting the cost of getting an education to the point where it's unaffordable for most.
Title IX compliance: Northwestern is one of many schools coming up short — from unequal scholarships and funding to inadequate facilities
By Molly Burke and Margaret Fleming
Chicago Tribune
Apr 09, 2023 at 6:30 am
For many college sports teams, it’s a short walk to the locker room after the final whistle. For Northwestern softball players, it’s more of a trek.
The baseball team’s locker room is steps behind the dugout at its stadium. Meanwhile, the softball team, which made it to the Women’s College World Series last spring, walks to the football stadium, Ryan Field, and climbs stairs to the third floor of the tower to meet after its games.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of another team not really having (a locker room) connected to their field or stadium that I’ve experienced playing,” Northwestern softball player Sydney Supple said.
Equal treatment for men’s and women’s sports teams is part of complying with Title IX, the 50-year-old federal law banning sex-based discrimination in government-funded education programs. Of the three requirements to comply with Title IX regulations, Northwestern fares far better than some schools in the Big Ten and nationally, but data the university provided shows a lack of financial investment in women’s programs.
And with a proposed multimillion-dollar reconstruction of Ryan Field, while stadiums for some women’s teams lack appropriate locker rooms or ample seating, Northwestern could be out of compliance with the third, more subjective requirement of Title IX, experts said.
“Even the really good schools, even the really vigilant schools, still need shoring up,” said Melissa Isaacson, a sports journalist and professor at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism.
Title IX compliance explained
The law requires that universities provide equal opportunities, proportional scholarships and equal treatment as a whole to men and women, regardless of a team’s success or revenue, Title IX lawyer Arthur Bryant said.
The Department of Education annually publishes a school-by-school breakdown of participation, coaching, revenues and expenses for sports programs in the Equity in Athletics Data Analysis (EADA).
More than 53% of the Northwestern student body is female, requiring the same percentage of athletes to be women for Title IX compliance, advocate Donna Lopiano said. Only 49.7% of Northwestern athletes are women, meaning 39 female students are missing athletic opportunities, Lopiano said.
Many Big Ten schools are similar to Northwestern in proportionality, but some are worse. Michigan would need to offer 93 more female students athletic opportunities to comply, while Penn State had a gap of 256 female students, according to 2021 EADA data.
Football teams have big rosters that tip the scales toward more male athletes, said Jill Zwagerman, a Title IX lawyer for Newkirk Zwagerman. Programs in the Football Bowl Subdivision of Division I are capped at 85 scholarship players, according to the NCAA.
“If they have football, they’re likely not in compliance,” Zwagerman said.
Northwestern presumably violates the requirement of proportional distribution of athletic scholarship money to male and female athletes, Bryant said. While the school’s gender ratio among athletes is nearly 1-to-1, it gives $12.4 million to male athletes and $10.1 million to female athletes, according to school data.
“Two million seems like a lot, but with a budget as big as that, it’s a drop in the bucket,” Zwagerman said. “They could fix it if they wanted to, pretty easy.”
Michigan was the Big Ten’s worst offender in 2021 with a $3.9 million difference.
The final clause of Title IX requires equal treatment between male and female athletes, looking at the quality of recruiting, coaching, facilities, equipment and perks. Even with vast differences, claims of unequal treatment have yet to be tested in court, Bryant said.
Smoothies and steak
Expensive projects such as the new Ryan Field point to special treatment for a men’s team that Bryant said would need to be reciprocated through benefits to women’s teams for Northwestern to comply with Title IX.
As Northwestern’s football program gets an $800 million upgrade — a figure Crain’s Chicago Business reported in September based on sources familiar with the rebuilding plans — softball players don’t know where they will meet during construction. Fans of their team and other sports such as the 2021 NCAA champion women’s field hockey squad often have to stand because of a lack of seating.
Many of the female athletes interviewed praised Northwestern for fairness in some benefits, such as the Walter Athletics Center and indoor training facilities they share with the men, as well as coaches’ commitment to ensure equal treatment. Still, each had at least one example of how the university treated male and female athletes differently.
The football team sleeps in a hotel before each game, including home games. The football and men’s and women’s basketball teams fly on chartered planes, but all other teams take commercial flights for regular-season competitions. The women’s soccer team flew commercial and split up on different planes for its NCAA Sweet 16 game this fall, a source close to the team said.
Online fencing biographies are bare or exclude athletes’ best performances, former Northwestern fencer Sophie Brill said. Women’s basketball player Abbie Wolf said that the Wilson Club, a private dining area in Welsh-Ryan Arena that’s often filled with alumni supporters, is not open for every women’s game.
“I think it’s a lot of factors that Northwestern doesn’t control, yet they can promote and encourage media coverage (and) special events to get everybody to games,” Wolf said.
Northwestern’s athletic department and Office of Civil Rights and Title IX Compliance declined multiple interview requests.
“As a matter of policy, and as you might expect as a private institution, we unfortunately don’t share any information beyond what is mandated to be reported in the EADA submission,” Paul Kennedy, associate athletic director for communications, wrote in an email.
Following the money
The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights governs Title IX compliance but never has taken action to punish an institution for noncompliance in athletics in the law’s 50 years, Zwagerman said.
“They’re not really a threat,” Zwagerman said. “They’ve never pulled any federal funding from any institution across the country. They have the power to do that, but they choose not to.”
The lack of enforcement from the Department of Education puts the burden on the athletes to hold universities accountable for Title IX, Zwagerman said, as was done recently by female students at San Diego State, Michigan State and Eastern Michigan.
(Chicago Tribune)
Bryant represents the San Diego State athletes who are suing over a $1.2 million difference in athletic financial aid from 2019-21, despite having more female athletes overall. Northwestern’s nearly equal gender proportion means female athletes should be getting more than $2 million more annually in scholarship money than they are now.
Schools are out of compliance with the equal opportunities clause when the participation gap is enough to field a team, Bryant said. With a gap of 39 female students not being afforded roster spots, Northwestern could come into compliance by bringing back its track and field team.
It is the only Big Ten school without a women’s track and field program, but it has a storied history in the sport for both genders before cutting the men’s and women’s teams in 1988. Wildcats athletes have brought home three Olympic gold medals in track and field, including two by Betty Robinson, who in 1928 became the first woman to win at the Olympics on the track.
Adding any women’s team would be a better move than eliminating a men’s sport, which has previously brought criticism, Isaacson said.
“It’s a really dangerous kind of thing that really hurts Title IX, hurts women’s sports,” Isaacson said. “That’s just not cutting up the pie properly. Women’s sports should not be blamed for that.”
Northwestern likely would be in full compliance if it added a women’s track and field team, made up the $2 million difference in scholarships and provided more seating and adequate locker rooms for all of its women’s sports. Yet without substantial legal threats from the Department of Education, schools are failing to police themselves, Lopiano said at Northwestern’s Title IX event.
“They’re following the money,” Lopiano said. “And that money is not going to women’s sports. It’s going basically to basketball and football.”
Molly Burke and Margaret Fleming are freelance reporters for the Chicago Tribune.
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