More Tales of Title IX Idiocy
Although I’ve written it before, I think it always bears repeating: the introduction of quotas will always create bizarre distortions in the long run. Here’s just another example from the Daily Eastern News, a campus publication at Eastern University in Ohio:
It was only a little more than a year ago when Ryan McKay crossed the finish line in third place in the Ohio Valley Conference Championships sporting his red and white Gamecocks uniform. Now McKay, a graduate student at Eastern, will be switching to the blue and white Panther uniform for his first official collegiate track meet this January.
McKay’s former school, Jacksonville State, did not have a men’s track program in order for them to be in compliance with Title IX regulations.
“That was kind of frustrating because there was interest and we could have had a pretty decent men’s track team,” McKay said. “I didn’t understand because it wasn’t like they had to provide us with scholarships or anything, they just had to allow us to compete.”
Jacksonville State has a women’s track team but not one for the men, so McKay’s coach would allow the guys that wanted to go to meets to run, but they were not allowed to score for a team, compete at conference championships, qualify for regionals or nationals.
“It was more about training because we couldn’t score as an official member of a team or anything, some meets we couldn’t even claim prizes or medals, which was kind of a bummer,” McKay said.
How anyone can defend a system that results in athletes being shut out like this is beyond me.
Defenders of the Title IX quota system like to talk about the gains made by women in athletics over the last 36 years, and we should all be grateful for that progress. But can anyone tell me how a situation like the one described above created any new opportunities for female athletes?
Think about it for a moment: Jacksonville State fielded a men’s track team without scholarships, and its members continued to compete even though they had no hope of ever winning any honors or recognition.