A federal court has stopped Eastern Michigan from cutting two women’s athletic programs, citing Title IX requirements. The status of the men’s swim team – also cut last spring – is unclear.
In March, Eastern Michigan announced that it would be cutting four athletic programs for budgetary reasons. The axed programs were men’s swimming & diving, men’s wrestling, women’s tennis and women’s softball. At the time, the decision was expected to impact 58 male and 24 female student-athletes and save $2.4 million.
But this week, a federal court ruled that the cutting of the four sports would leave Eastern Michigan in violation of Title IX, the law best-known for mandating that schools offer equal athletics opportunities for men and women.
The Detroit Free Press reports that U.S. District Judge George Caram Steeh granted a preliminary injunction that would stop the school from cutting the two women’s programs, tennis and softball. The court ultimately found that the school’s financial hardship was not a viable reason to be allowed to violate Title IX.
The DFP reports that Eastern Michigan’s general student body is 59.4% women, but its student-athlete population is only 43.9% women.
It’s unclear what this mean’s for men’s swimming & diving, which was set to be cut along with the two now-protected programs.
The Title IX inconsistency is why an Institution with only a 41% male student body is not required to create programs to bring in more of that underrepresented minority of men as undergraduates at the institution? Seems to me that the problem of “under-educated” males is at least equal to or more important than “under-athleticated” females. Oh wait! The institution DOES already have those programs in place….it is called Varsity Athletics!!
I hope they bring it back. However, the damage to the program has already been done with all the transfers. But it could still be possible to re-build given a few years.
Peter Linn would only need two years to be back.