Minnesota State University Men’s Team on the Chopping Block

By Taylor George

MANKATO, Minn., March 31. IT looks as if Minnesota State University (Mankato) Athletic Director Kevin Buisman is out to cut another set of men’s Olympic sports. His first casualties came during his tenure at the University of Northern Iowa (UNI), where he killed the men's swim team, crying poverty (even as he was building a multi-million dollar indoor football practice facility). Athletic Directors like Mr. Buisman are out to gain every possible resource for two sports: men's basketball, and football. At MSU this largesse is extended to hockey.

Don’t be fooled into thinking these cuts are about Title IX. If that were so, this administration would have gone after male-only sports. The reason is that cutting coed sports like swimming adversely affects female recruitment. For example, just this year when the announcement was made that MSU was cutting men’s swimming, several women asked for releases from MSU.

Buisman has also done very little to improve dismal female participation in athletics, which incidently is the intent of Title IX. Women’s cross country had five athletes, softball had 14, and basketball only nine. If Buisman were serious about proportionality between the sexes, he would have improved these dismal numbers.

Last year there were 346 male and 220 female intercollegiate athletes at MSU. Cutting men’s swimming and tennis — which Buisman proposes to do — only accounts for 21 spots and would do virtually nothing to achieve proportionality. Not one school in this country with football is proportional, and it’s never realistically going to happen at MSU or any other school with football. That’s because football has 85 roster spots and there is no female equivalent.

What’s even more telling is that MSU is already in compliance with Title IX. As long as MSU meets one of the three tests as outlined in Title IX it passes on the issue of equity. The test that MSU passes is called the interest and ability prong. The problem with our administration is that it is focusing solely on proportionality in determining whether or not our school is in compliance. Proportionality is only one of three possible prongs, or tests, given by the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) to determine gender equity.

So how does MSU, a Division II school, pass the interest and ability prong? We pass it in several ways. MSU offers all of the women’s sports in which the NCC conducts championships. MSU also offers every sport in every other geographically feasible conference, including the Northern Sun, and Mid-America Conferences.

There are only three Division II national championship sports in which MSU women do not compete: field hockey, lacrosse, and rowing. In those three sports we have no one to compete with geographically. MSU offers every women’s sport for which Division II competition is available, and because of that we pass the interest and ability prong.

It is also hard to figure out how the school will save any real money cutting men’s swimming. The men’s swim team shares virtually all costs with the women’s swim team including coaching salaries, busing, and facilities costs. Ninety to 95 percent of the costs associated with men’s swimming will continue without the men. The men’s swim team has only $1,075 in scholarships, but will certainly lose many donations if the University cuts the program, including the $100,000 endowment one former MSU swimmer has promised if the men's team is kept intact.

The administration gains neither budget nor proportionality by cutting these two programs. What Buisman and MSU athletics gains is a shifting of priorities away from broad-based education.

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Taylor George, MSU Class of 1998, Swimmer 1994-1998

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