(10-08-2020 09:44 AM)Old tribe Wrote: (10-07-2020 09:24 PM)Zorch Wrote: I’m on record as not wanting to cut any sports; however, I don’t see the need to add any sports either. I would like to see a detailed analysis on exactly where we stand on male/female ratios for Title IX. If the gap is small (and, presumably, to the detriment of females) then perhaps it could be rectified by simply adding some more sprinters/middle distance/ long distance runners/swimmers and maybe just one or two players in the other women’s sports. They don’t have to be on scholarship to be counted as participants.
Here is what the EADA shows (the data used to analyze Title IX) with respect to male/female enrollment and male/female athletics participation.
Enrollment
Men: 2,662
Women: 3,635
42.3% male/57.7% female
Varsity Athletics Participation (prior to cuts)
Men: 344
Women: 296
53.75% men/46.25% women.
So there is a variance of 11.45% between enrollment and participation.
As I stated in a prior post, Title IX is a three part test (and all 3 parts need to be met to be in compliance). But when most people talk about Title IX they talk about the first test: whether a schools is providing equal athletics participation opportunities to its male and female students.
There are 3 ways you can meet this first prong. The safest way (as a result, it's called the safe harbor) is to show you have a variance of 2% or less between your enrollment and your athletics participation opportunities. Before the cuts, W&M was well outside of this 2% range. As shown above, the variance is 11.45%. This is a historical issue, not something Huge created (as I've seen some claim), based on W&M having majority female enrollment and having a football team.
After the cuts, W&M would have 220 male athletes and 235 female athletes, putting it closer to the 2% variance but still not within it. The variance drops to 6.1% in this scenario (51.6% female athletes/48.4% male athletes versus 57.7% enrollment/42.3% male enrollment).
But as I also said in my earlier post, W&M can show it's meeting this first prong of Title IX by demonstrating it has a history of adding women's sports. This is a fact intensive, subjective inquiry and W&M could satisfy the first prong of Title IX under this inquiry. Especially with the cuts, since it is reducing its variance range.
A deeper dive into some of the numbers showed some very interesting trends. First, though, some housekeeping. You (Old tribe) have written several times that a school has to pass all 3 tests in order to be Title IX compliant. During these discussions I read an article saying that a school has to pass only one of the three tests to be compliant. Your statement about Test 1 being the "safe harbor" would actually seem to corroborate that (that is, in your scenario of needing all three then how would passing only one give you a safe harbor? It would give you safe harbor if you needed only one.).
Okay, to the numbers. The data quoted above (which is from the W&M site) is for the 2018-2019 school year. I have found all the numbers for the current year except for one crucial detail. I know that the number of current undergrads is 6256 but I don't know how many of them are female. (Interesting that this number is not found on the W&M site, even when I search for "number of female students"). If anyone has that number then please provide it.
In 2018-2019 the number of athletes was 640 (male and female). Note that this number includes duplicates. For example, indoor track is counted as one sport and so is outdoor track and so is cross country. However, the athletes running indoor track are invariably the same people running outdoor track. Also, for the current year, 100% of the cross country team also runs track (this is true for both the men and women). I won't call it hanky-panky or a shell game because I'm sure that the NCAA allows such counting. Just note, however, that the Athletic Department can support two (or three) running sports by awarding just one scholarship. (My daughter ran both indoor and outdoor track and she was only on one partial scholarship).
So, comparing the 2018-2019 numbers to the 2020-2021 counts we see:
Total athletes went down from 640 to 602, a loss of 38 athletes. 15 were men and 23 were women. So, Huge/Martin, if W&M is trying to be in Title IX compliance then why are women's numbers dropping faster than men's? If you look at the unduplicated numbers, it is 510 athletes in 2018-2019 versus 481 in 2020-2021 (a loss of 10 men and 19 women).
Even before the seven sports were dropped, swimming, gymnastics, and track were taking big hits. I attribute this to Huge working on her plan years before she even announced it. Men's Swimming lost 5 slots in those two years while Women's Swimming lost 3 slots. MGym lost 2 slots while WGym lost 5 athletes. Men's Track lost 6 slots. (Meanwhile, Women's Track (sport not dropped) lost 8 athletes. Bad management there; Huge should have been increasing women's track athletes). Volleyball lost 1 spot in those two years. Meanwhile, for comparison, Football stayed the same at 102 slots, Baseball added 1 slot (34 to 35), and MBB lost two slots (16 to 14).
Bottom line: it appears that the dropped sports were being gutted even before the ax fell. It also appears that the department did not do a very good job of trying to ratchet up the number of women athletes. As noted above, the women lost even more athletes than the men during those two years.
If the number of women undergraduates for 2020-2021 is known then Title IX percentages can be calculated.