Ball now in judge’s court on UCD’s Title IX compliance

SACRAMENTO — Did UC Davis make a good-faith effort to grant women equal opportunities in sports?

Or were some of the university’s top officials paying lip service to compliance with federal law while actually making the road tougher for female athletes?

Eight and a half years after three female wrestlers filed suit, U.S. District Court Judge Frank C. Damrell Jr. will rule on those questions. Attorneys on both sides presented their closing arguments Wednesday.

Arezou Mansourian, Lauren Mancuso and Christine Ng, who were cut from the wrestling team in 2001, contend that UCD was not in compliance with Title IX, the 1972 federal law prohibiting gender discrimination at educational institutions that receive federal money.

They’re also suing then-Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef, Senior Associate Athletics Director Pam Gill-Fisher, Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Bob Franks and Athletics Director Greg Warzecka for allegedly violating the wrestlers’ constitutional right to equal protection.

UCD argues that it worked hard to comply with a murky law — and that those same administrators championed women’s athletics.

The plaintiffs’ attorney, Noreen Farrell, called the female wrestlers “courageous pioneers.” With them, UCD had a “pivotal chance” to stand up for equity and didn’t, instead pursuing a policy of discrimination that was “systematic, blatant and frankly too long-running to be explained away.”

“At a minimum,” Farrell said, the four administrators showed “deliberate indifference” to Title IX compliance and the plight of the female wrestlers, specifically, “who suffered for (UCD’s) policy of no women allowed.”

Not so, said Nancy Sheehan, UCD’s attorney: “Rather than being deliberately indifferent, they acted with extreme care and concern.” It was the women’s coach, Michael Burch, she said, who “didn’t give a damn” about them and “manipulated” them to try to protect his job.

Universities are in compliance with Title IX if they provide athletic participation opportunities proportionate to student enrollment, demonstrate a continual expansion of such opportunities for the underrepresented gender or can show they have accommodated the interests and abilities of the underrepresented gender.

UCD says it met the second prong of that three-pronged test.

A numbers game

The university went about two decades without adding a women’s team until 1996-97. That’s when it added three new teams: water polo, lacrosse and crew. It could do so at a time of unprecedented budget cuts because students passed a referendum to pay for the expansion.

“There was no expansion — none — from 1978 to 1996. … That is not a history of expansion,” Farrell said.

UCD cut junior varsity football and men’s junior varsity basketball to better balance opportunities for men and women to play sports.

It officially added women’s indoor track and field in 1998. The U.S. Department of Education counts it as a separate sport from outdoor track, though the same athletes are competing.

The plaintiffs’ attorney pointed out that female track and field athletes began competing indoors as early as 1993, arguing that counting it as a sport was a way for the university to “manufacture” the appearance of further effort to comply with Title IX.

At the same time, UCD rejected a series of proposals by club teams to become varsity sports. It actually cut participation opportunities by axing junior varsity women’s teams in lacrosse and water polo, Farrell said.

Sheehan countered that those teams were eliminated for budgetary reasons and because they lacked teams to compete against: “Yes, there were times when the numbers (of opportunities for women) went down, but overall they went up. And when they went down, there was a legitimate reason.”

UCD did not add sports that would not be viable, Sheehan said. Teams need good coaches, practice space and competition to succeed. “It’s not just quantity, it’s quality,” she added.

Farrell argued UCD should have done more and recognized it.

In 1993, for example, then-Athletic Director Keith Williams wrote a memo saying there was no lack of interest in women’s sports on campus, only a lack of opportunity. He suggested women’s golf would make an easy addition to the program.

Under his successor, Warzecka, UCD did not add golf until 2005.

Warzecka testified that move was delayed because there was no championship for NCAA Division II schools, at which level UCD competed early in his tenure. In addition, Division II schools were allowed to compete in just one Division I sport per gender — and UCD already had a women’s gymnastics team doing so.

Sheehan argued that UCD went beyond what other universities were doing to comply with “vague” federal law. The Department of Education issued a Title IX clarification as recently as 1996, she said, and even then said it would not impose cookie-cutter formulas.

Wrestling history

Women had been practicing with the UCD wrestling team for about a decade when the plaintiffs arrived on campus.

Then-wrestling coach Burch testified that Warzecka told him to cut Mansourian and Ng from the team before the 2000-01 season. The coach did so, but allowed them to practice.

Warzecka testified that he only told Burch that his roster needed to be at 34 wrestlers or fewer and that Burch cut the women because they wouldn’t help his team.

Later, when the women complained about their treatment, the administrators reinstated them, giving them the same chance as men who wanted to try out for the team.

Mansourian and Ng filed a complaint with the Department of Education, which later cleared UCD of wrongdoing. Sheehan said the department’s Office of Civil Rights has never been called on to investigate UCD’s program otherwise.

Burch was fired. He later settled a lawsuit claiming he was let go for sticking up for the female wrestlers. He received $725,000, but UCD admitted no wrongdoing, saying it chose to settle to avoid costly litigation.

To remain on the team, the female wrestlers were told, they would have to win a place on it. Farrell called that unfair.

Sheehan said tryouts are a fact of life in sports, and that the women were trying out for a men’s team just as female kickers have made football teams.

“UC Davis did not create the difference between men and women in terms of upper body strength,” she said.

Two of the women lost. The third decided not to try out.

Farrell said Sheehan’s argument that UCD lacked the money to add sports didn’t hold water, because the administrators raised money for causes “that mattered to them” — a $30 million stadium and the move up to NCAA Division I.

Sheehan said that in the early 1990s, UCD was in danger of losing its entire athletic program because of state budget cuts.

Experts disagree

Judge Damrell also will be left to weigh the expert testimony of two top experts on Title IX — a “clash of the titans,” in Sheehan’s words.

Donna Lopiano testified on behalf of the wrestlers, Christine Grant for UCD.

Lopiano is the former chief executive officer of the Women’s Sports Foundation and athletic director of the University of Texas at Austin. Grant is the longtime athletic director of the University of Iowa. Both are past presidents of the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women.

They are also co-founders of Sports Management Resources, a consulting firm. Yet the colleagues came to very different conclusions about what took place at UCD.

Both testified that universities should be adding new sports every two to three years to comply with the second prong of Title IX.

Grant, testifying against students for the first time, said the university deserved credit over time for adding three sports at once; Lopiano disagreed, however, noting that UCD dropped opportunities as well.

Damrell is expected to issue his ruling in July.

— Reach Cory Golden at cgolden@davisenterprise.net or (530) 747-8046.

Short URL: http://www.davisenterprise.com/?p=54789

Posted by Cory Golden on Jun 16 2011.
Last Login: Wed 16 May 2012 11:14:07 AM PDT
Filed under Crime, Fire + Courts, UC Davis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry