Monday, October 16, 2006

The College Sports Council is a national coalition of coaches, athletes, parents, and fans who are devoted to preserving and promoting the student athlete experience.

Activities of the organization include:
* Saving sports programs.
Members of the CSC have comprehensive, hands on experience in working with college programs threatened with termination. The CSC is the only national multi- sport coalition devoted to the preservation of collegiate athletic teams.

* Title IX reform.
The CSC is the leading organization working for reform of Title IX regulations that have led to the widespread elimination of opportunities for male athletes.

The College Sports Council (CSC) announced today that Title IX expert Jessica Gavora has joined the organization as Communications Director.

Gavora is a writer, public policy expert and author of Tilting the Playing Field: Schools, Sports, Sex and Title IX. She previously served as the founder and leader of the Play Fair Project of the Independent Women's Forum, a Washington, DC group dedicated to equal opportunity for women.

"Jessica has always been a leader on the issue of Title IX reform. She is a gifted communicator with tremendous expertise in public policy. She is the perfect person to make the case for ending the senseless damage inflicted on our college athletes by the gender quota. I think I speak for everyone in the College Sports Council in saying that we are very excited to have Jessica on our team," said Leo Kocher, CSC President.

"This is a match made in heaven," said Gavora. "The College Sports Council is out there on the ground, every day, ensuring that both men and women have equality before the law in collegiate athletics. I look forward to bringing my knowledge of the politics and policy of Title IX to their good work."

In addition to her work for the Independent Women's Forum, Gavora previously served as speechwriter and senior policy advisor at the Department of Justice. She is currently a consultant for Gingrich Communications, a company headed by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

As Secretary Paige and the Bush administration contemplate regulatory changes to Title IX based on Thursday's votes by the commission, they will be wise to remember that the proportionality test has not always been the sole standard of compliance with the law. The proportionality test was created in 1979 as one part of a three-part test that, like the commission's recommendations, also purported to take into account different levels of interest and ability in athletics among men and women. But over the years, bureaucrats have worked hand-in-hand with women's activists and trial lawyers to make the three-part test a one-part test of statistical proportionality. And as long as the clear, quantifiable, but deeply illiberal proportionality test is on the books, it will be the refuge sought by judges faced with difficult questions of equity — and the socially engineered outcome promoted by feminists and their lawyers.

For all the sturm and drang that has accompanied the deliberations of the Commission on Opportunity in Athletics, its word will not be the final word on Title IX. The recommendations of the commission will be forwarded to the education secretary in a report next month. The hard, politically perilous work of reform will be left to the Bush administration. Aware of this, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle took a page from the feminists' playbook in a statement on Title IX earlier this week. "If the president refuses to defend Title IX," Daschle said, "its supporters in Congress will."

For the sake of fairness for both girls and boys, let's hope that the preemptive strategy of Daschle and the feminist gender warriors fails to achieve its objective.