How Brown Cutting Varsity Sports Illuminated Civil Rights Violations
Brown University announced on May 28th that it would cut 11 varsity sports from its athletic department. They ended the Division 1 athletic careers of 162 of their athletes without any kind of warning, one week into the start of summer, just weeks after 35 incoming recruits had a deadline to accept their admission, in the middle of a global pandemic, and at the start of a modern Civil Rights Movement. The rhetoric that the University’s president and athletic director have used, in combination with the timing of these landmark changes, has drawn concern and suspicion from people all across the globe that have heard the news.
Students and coaches have tried to make some sense of it all — replaying every interaction with the Department that might have given them pause in the past year, knowing that financials and lack of performance aren’t the true motivations behind the change. Brown University Athletics lists integrity as its first core value, phrasing it in the mission statement as “playing an essential role in teaching students to conduct themselves with honesty and integrity…” It is extremely difficult to see University leaders and trustees violate this central tenet of our athletic program. For many of us, fortunately, our curiosity and commitment to integrity do not vanish with the University’s effort to make us invisible. I’ve compiled data by certified databases, government reports, and witnesses that reveal key facts that the Department has yet to acknowledge. It is nearly indisputable that these facts heavily correlate with their decision, and that they have exacerbated inequalities without formally breaking Title IX. This is not about athletics, as fellow Medium contributor Russell Dinkins has amply introduced, it’s about a violation of gender, diversity, and civil rights of these college athletes at large.
Brown’s history of gender-related inequity in sports, as made visible by the 1993 Cohen v. Brown University case, has current student-athletes, families, alumni, and supporters calculating the number of men and women that the new change leaves. It is true that Brown has not violated the terms of this 1998 settlement (having a gender differential of no more than 3.5% with the number of teams that they previously had. Under the new ratio, it is now only allowed to be 2.25%) by going from 38 to 29 Varsity Teams. That would be too obvious and immediately actionable under the law. After recently hearing a peer recall the “feds” visiting last year regarding an ongoing investigation, I was put on a path that led to notable discoveries.
Since 2014, Brown has had 10 reports of Title IX violations that have been federally investigated by the Office of Civil Rights (OCR), in the Department of Education, held under the jurisdiction of the United States Federal Government. For context, Harvard has 6 (including one from a graduate school) Title IX investigations and Yale has 2, although they both hold a significantly larger overall student population attributed by an exponentially larger graduate student population. Last year, the “feds” were on campus to investigate gender discrepancies in athletic opportunities and general University value on female athletes. They interviewed athletes and coaches as part of that. The investigation is still open, as the OCR database can attest to. To date, these investigations have never been publicly acknowledged by President Paxson and Director Hayes.
My affected student-athlete counterparts — between school record-holders, NCAA Championship participants, and nationally ranked top-three teams — have proven that they are essential to the University’s athletic success. Since cutting these specific teams based on performance has been thoroughly rebuked, it is important to evaluate how the teams that got cut did, especially in light of these inquiries into the Department’s suspected foul play around Title IX and gender.
Brown’s recent change, without Men’s Cross Country and Track & Field, would disproportionately cut more women than men. Given that Men’s Cross Cross Country and Track & Field has a squad size of 49, they account for a considerable portion of the total women cut from every team (65).
Men’s Cross Country and Track & Field were a casualty of the restraints of Title IX — and here’s why. Brown was able to maximize the number of women that they cut (over a wider range of teams) by getting rid of such a large men’s team. 6 men’s teams and 5 women’s teams have been cut, when it is truthfully 5 and 5 (As a first, for this announcement, they separated Track and Field into two separate teams although they roster them as one). Some even look at it as 4 men’s teams and 5 women’s teams given that every Men’s Cross Country athlete is also on Men’s Track and Field and are sometimes treated as one. They are nearly synonymous with each other. As many others have pointed out, Brown Athletics also threw away one of its most diverse teams, raising other serious and unanswered questions about how much they value diversity in their student-athlete populations.
Of the other men’s teams cut, they all have female counterparts that were also eliminated from varsity status. The other two women’s teams did not have varsity counterparts. In effect, Brown has blatantly illustrated that they used Title IX in the way it shouldn’t be by cutting a large group of men from one sport to eliminate women representing a range of sports. In this case, both genders are significantly affected, but women are targeted.
If you still aren’t convinced that Title IX and gender was involved in this decision, you should look at how financials are allocated towards men and women athletes. Athletic departments are required to publish a financial summary called an “Equity in Athletics Data Analysis.” The report summarizes the quantitative details of an athletic department and includes the number of participants (by team, by gender), coaching salaries (by gender of sport), revenues, and expenses (by team, by gender). Brown falters on the allocation of resource discrepancies throughout the report. You have to look beyond the locker rooms and the equipment, and more at the marketing and the off-the-field opportunities. They spent 10.1 million dollars on men’s teams while spending 7.2 million on women’s. The monetary value that they have assigned to us is inconsistent with another piece of the Brown Athletics mission statement — “providing equitable opportunities for women and minorities.” To top it off, as we continue to have global discussions on the importance of equal pay, women coaches, on average, are paid a stark difference — $38,875 less than their male counterparts at Brown.
The manner in which the teams were cut has led to the reveal of two critical and public pieces of information, which has revealed a strong relevance and correlation to this decision:
- Government records of their Title IX investigations by federal agencies
- Department expenditure differences between male and female athletics
I’ve grappled with what I have discovered in these reports and through speaking with affiliated sources for about a week. There is strength in honesty and transparency, and given that our leaders have let us down in those areas, I could not justify continuing to withhold these findings.
As President Paxson has made clear, she has controlled the narrative by standing by the decision and articulating her commitment to upholding it. For so many of us current student-athletes, affected families, incoming and future hopeful recruits, infinite amounts of alumni, this will be the biggest athletic-related battle we’ve taken on yet. And we will keep going — if not out of respect for ourselves, each other, and our coaches — for the unyielding and fundamental pursuit of transparency and truth.