Cracking The Code on Title IX Enforcement

Over in the Daily Trojan, USC freshman Allegra Tepper is thinking out loud about Title IX and equality:

Statutes like Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in any program or activity at any educational institution, have grown increasingly archaic. I can’t imagine girls storming Cromwell Field with pitchforks and torches if, heaven forbid, we had a men’s soccer team as well as a women’s one. Gender balance in athletics isn’t exactly a make it or break it point when it comes down to school pride.

I’ve got a question for Ms. Tepper: Does it make sense in 2010 for USC to have a women’s soccer team but not a men’s team? USC is smack dab in the middle of one of America’s greatest soccer hotbeds in Southern California. If USC did have a team, it could easily become a national power. Better still, it would have an instant rival in the men’s game in UCLA, a national soccer power in its own right.

There’s only one reason that USC doesn’t have a team, and that’s the use of gender quotas in Title IX enforcement. So, instead of just noticing that men are kept off the soccer field at USC, why not do something about it? In the wake of 40 years of incredible strides by women, perhaps it’s time to eliminate gender quotas that distort college athletics.