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Stories of the Year: 2008

By Erin Buzuvis, Sudha Setty, and Kristine Newhall

In what is becoming an annual tradition, here is a roundup of the top ten Title IX stories of 2008! In no particular order...

• Florida Gulf Coast University was sued by two former coaches, Jaye Flood and Holly Vaughn, and the university counsel Wendy Morris, on claims that the university retaliated against all three women for trying to air concerns about Title IX violations in the athletic department. This fall FGCU settled with the coaches for $3.4 million and with Morris for $850,000.

• The NCAA delved into Title IX issues, limiting the use of male practice players in Division III and putting together a toolkit to help member institutes protect the rights of pregnant and parenting student athletes.

• A high profile sexual harassment case involving University of North Carolina soccer coach Anson Dorrance settled for $385,000.

• We saw several stories about schools going overboard with sex segregated classrooms, such as Greene County Georgia, which backed off of its preliminary plan to convert the entire school school district but vows to continue to explore the possibility, and a middle school in Mobile County, Alabama, whose entire conversion to single sex classes is being challenged by the ACLU.

• Fresno State drops its appeals of jury verdicts in favor of former coaches Stacy Johnson-Klein and Lindy Vivas in exchange for $9 million and $5.2 million settlements, respectively. It also settled with administrative assistant Iris Levasque for $125,000 and preemptively with softball coach Margie Wright for $605,000.

• More retaliation cases brought by coaches are filed -- against University of Tennesee-Martin, Texas Southern, and San Diego Mesa -- settled -- by San Diego State -- and resolved by a jury in the plaintiff's favor -- against Iowa State.

• There was a small handful of what we'll call "softball is not the equivalent of baseball" stories (here, here, and here).

• Remember when Title IX's unlikely poster-child was Sarah Palin?

• There was much wringing of hands about the knees and heads of female athletes. The subtle and not so subtle implication of Title IX in the rise of concussions and ACL tears among female athletes seemed to evoke the persistent myth of female frailty.

• Government agencies announced plans to root out sex discrimination in the allocation of research grants in science and engineering, evoking an alarmist and distorting missive by New York Times columnist John Tierney that turned "Title IX" into a verb.
  

Thanks to our readers for being with us for all the Title IX news, good and bad, in 2008. Our best wishes to the Title IX community for a happy, healthy, sporty, educational new year!

Full post as published by Title IX Blog on December 31, 2008 (boomark / email).