TITLE IX Federal court judge rules Slippery Rock must reinstate sports

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- Slippery Rock University must reinstate two women's sports it cut for budget reasons because the school is not complying with a federal law requiring equal opportunities for female athletes, a federal judge ruled.
The university in January announced it was cutting eight sports to save $350,000 -- including women's field hockey, water polo and swimming -- as part of an effort to erase a $2 million budget shortfall. The school later decided to keep field hockey, but members of the women's swimming and water polo teams challenged the cuts in a federal lawsuit.
U.S. District Judge Donetta Ambrose found university President Robert Smith was wrong not to consider compliance with Title IX, a law requiring schools that receive federal money to provide equal sports opportunities for men and women.
"Knowing that SRU was not compliant with Title IX, Smith nevertheless decided not to consider Title IX compliance in determining which teams to eliminate," Ambrose ruled.
No comment
Slippery Rock officials declined to comment Monday and referred questions to the state attorney general's office.
A spokesman for the attorney general, Nils Frederiksen, noted that Ambrose said her ruling could change if the university can demonstrate Title IX compliance in the future.
"It's not a permanent issue and we expect it will be revisited in the future, although it's unclear when that will be," Frederiksen said.
Beth Choike, 20, of Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., was the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit. Choike, who will be a junior, was captain of the swim team and also played water polo, and receives a partial scholarship for both sports.
"I never lost hope and I never stopped fighting for it," Choike said Monday. "We're reinstated for the next year and I know my teammates and I are very pleased."
Tried to be fair
The school, which also cut men's swimming, water polo, golf, wrestling and tennis after the school year ended, had argued in court that it tried to be fair in deciding which sports to cut.
Smith used spreadsheets including financial data for the school's 23 teams, and other information, including how competitive the teams were and their academic performance, before deciding which teams to cut.
Smith testified that a major reason the water sports were cut was that the teams' pool needed $1 million in renovations. But James Yeamans, the coach of the women's water polo and swimming teams, testified the facilities are comparable to competing schools and that another pool on campus could have been used for the teams.
Roster-management plan
The university said it also implemented a roster-management plan in March to address Title IX concerns. Under the plan, the number of roster spots on men's teams would be cut from 271 to 240 and spots on women's teams increased from 235 to 288 to provide proportional opportunities for women.
But Ambrose found the plan was just a "paper increase." For example, the school planned to upgrade the women's club lacrosse team to a varsity squad with 24 roster spots -- even though the club team had only 17 players, and none expressed an interest in joining a more demanding varsity program.
"SRU could simply designate the 'addition' of these positions without actually expecting that they be filled," Ambrose said.
Susan J. Frietsche, an attorney at the Women's Law Project who represented the students, said that tactic "signals that this was not the school's good faith response to the expressed interest of its students."