ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, April 23, 1997 TAG: 9704230035
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER THE ROANOKE TIMES
Two years after settlement of a discrimination lawsuit, participation in women's sports at Tech makes national news.
Virginia Tech is one of nine educational institutions in the nation that has met a federal standard for providing athletic opportunities to male and female students proportionally to their enrollments.
Tech's Board of Visitors learned of the university's accomplishment Monday, the same day that the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal of the athletic equality standard.
Virginia Tech is one of three universities to come within 1percentage point difference between female enrollment and athletic participation, according to a survey by USA Today.
The lawsuit that reached the Supreme Court narrowed the requirements of the 25-year-old law, Title IX, that mandates that colleges and universities come within 5 percentage points of female enrollment and athletics.
The Supreme Court let stand a lower-court ruling defining the gender parity. The case involved a lawsuit by female gymnasts and volleyball players at Brown University in Rhode Island, asking that the school be made to restore funding to the two women's sports.
When the case was heard in 1993, more than half of Brown's undergraduates were women and 38 percent of its athletes were women. A judge ruled that cutting funding for the two sports had been discriminatory.
Some 60 colleges and universities had appealed the ruling. The failure of the appeal means all schools must meet the proportionality test, even if that requires cutting men's athletics to beef up women's sports.
Results of the USA Today survey were copied and distributed to Tech's Board of Visitors when it met on campus Monday, as part of a report on Tech's plan to expand women's sports.
The plan has been under way at Tech since 1994, a year before the settlement of another federal lawsuit by 12 female Tech athletes charging that there were fewer opportunities for female athletes than for men.
Before the Tech lawsuit, women had about 20 percent of its athletic opportunities and made up about 40 percent of its undergraduates.
The USA Today survey looked at more than 300 Division I schools, which are defined by the number of full athletic scholarships they offer.
Forty-one percent of Tech's undergraduates and 40 percent of its athletes are women. Tech is one of three universities in the country within 1 percentage point, the others being Georgia Tech and Washington State.
Radford University has traditionally kept its proportion of women's athletic opportunities close to its proportions of male and females students. Part of the reason is that Radford has no football program, which involves many male athletes at other universities. The exact proportion was not available Tuesday.
In other business, the Tech Board of Visitors approved a bond issue of up to $3.2 million to finance renovations of Cochrane Dining Hall on campus.
The project includes renovating some 7,000 square feet of the building and adding about 7,400 square feet to it. Costs also include about $1 million for built-in food service equipment.
The board also approved new out-of-state tuition rates for its College of Veterinary Medicine operated here in cooperation with the University of Maryland.
Tuition for Virginia and Maryland residents will stay at $7,620, but rates for out-of-state students will increase by 3 percent next year to $20,086.
Despite the increased costs for the 10 out-of-state student spots at the veterinary school, the board learned that 466 students have applied for those spots.
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