Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Throws Support to Delaware Men’s Track Team in Title IX Dispute

Earlier this week, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review threw its support behind the effort to get the men’s track and field team reinstated at the University of Delaware:

So cowed are colleges and universities by the “social justice” agenda behind Title IX — the federal law banning sex discrimination in education — that they’re pre-emptively cutting men’s varsity sports teams to avoid potential future hassles.

Yet in doing so, they might well be sowing the seeds of Title IX’s long-overdue undoing.

The New York Times reports the University of Delaware wants to relegate its men’s track and cross-country teams to club status — not because it’s scrambling to comply with Title IX now but to prevent possible future noncompliance.

In effect, the university wants male athletes to pay today for violations it might commit someday. That stinks.

To their credit, the targeted men forced the university into mediation with them by filing a complaint with the federal Title IX overseer, the Office of Civil Rights, alleging discrimination. They deserve to prevail — and to thereby give all of higher education pause.

With women now in the majority on campus, institutions’ usual route to compliance — discriminating against men by cutting men’s teams — is ever less viable. Title IX, after all, bans discrimination against both genders.

Hopefully, the Delaware case is a harbinger of Title IX’s hoisting by its own petard.