UC Berkeley will spend $30 million on building new softball and beach volleyball teams. While Title IX is widely understood to be a sports equity law, its historical advancement of feminist interests and its application at Cal today reveal a more ambitious and inclusive agenda. Not merely a mechanism for intercollegiate sports, Title IX advocates for building holistic inclusive collegiate experiences and making that ethos integral to the operations and strategy of the university.

UC Berkeley MPP ‘20 Spencer Bowen talks with Meagan Owusu, Head Beach Volleyball Coach at Cal and campus directors Denise Oldham and Jenny Simon O'Neal of Cal Athletics and Title IX programs to discover why Title IX is a flash point that opens opportunities, but also underscores the societal role of universities to foster the personal and professional growth in its students.

Transcript

Megan Owusu  It's very empowering, not only as a new sport here on campus but also as a female sport, to know that this university has our back and wants us to be great. Just as great as our male counterparts.

Spencer Bowen That's Megan Owusu, Cal's head beach volleyball coach, and this is Talk Policy to me. We'll get back to Megan soon but first, let's take a big step back. Why is she so appreciative? The answer is complex and pretty expensive. And it has everything to do with Title 9. I'm Spencer Bowen. Let's talk gender equity policy.

On June 20 3rd 1972, Title 9 passed as an amendment to the Higher Education Act. It reads "No person in the United States shall on the basis of sex be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance." Only 37 words, but they've made a huge impact in education.

Denise Oldham There are very few universities that I could think of public or private that don't receive federal funds. And so that's why it applies so broadly.

Spencer That's Denise Oldham UC Berkeley's Title 9 officer and director of the Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination.

Denise Oldham, An intercollegiate athletics is considered, in that rubric, an educational program.

Spencer Bowen So despite not explicitly mentioning sports, Title IX applies to college athletics. In fact, many think Title IX is a sports equity law because it's had such a big impact on female sports.

Jenny Simon O'Neill  It's interesting now actually you know talking to a little like little girls who are playing soccer, you know, do they know what Title 9 is?

Spencer Bowen That's Jenny Simon O'Neill.

Jenny Simon O'Neill And a lot of them don't, and in some ways do we want. Do we want that to be the case because now they just assume that they have the same experience that male student athletes have. And actually like that in a lot of ways that said I think it's important that everybody knows the path from which we came to really understand you know how do we keep equity at the highest level.

Spencer Jenny is the senior associate athletic director and senior woman administrator for Cal athletics.

Jenny Simon O'Neill  My job as it relates to Title Nine is that I'm responsible for monitoring operational compliance ensuring that every decision we make has gender equity at the forefront of those decisions.

Denise Oldham I mean essentially it ensures that that all students and all students that want to, in this case, participate in athletics have an open door to walk through.

Spencer Bowen After President Nixon signed it into law. Title 9 rapidly opened doors for female athletes.

Jenny Simon O'Neill Pretty quickly after that, 1978 certainly, is when we really started increasing the opportunities for women. And that came in a variety of different ways. There are a number of sports that women participated in but were not sponsored at the varsity level and many of those sports were added, from the athletic standpoint, as varsity sports. There were also scholarships offered at that point. And really, athletics department started looking through a different lens and ensuring that the female student athletes that walked in the door and they were competing with the name of the University across their jerseys, really, had the same experience that the male student athletes had.

And I think that's one of the reasons that this is such an important part of what we do every day. It really provides us with a map and defining what is what is an equitable experience mean.

Spencer Here's Denise on what that map actually looks like.

Denise Oldham So there are two basic provisions. One is that you have to take measures that provide equal access to the program. And then once you're in it, you have to ensure that those people who are participating in the program are treated equitably.

Spencer So broadly, we've got equitable access and treatment which sounds great.

What's that like day to day?

Denise Oldham Part of compliance is actually weaving the principles of gender equity into your operational decisions. So a lot of people think about compliance as maybe one day a week where you get your checklist out and you start checking off boxes and making phone calls in a very sort of accountant type way of working. And actually, compliance with Title 9 does involve some very specific data gathering and reporting and periodic submission to federal agencies or putting documents up, for example, that can be viewed by any particular agency. But really, what we have to do is figure out how to, and I think this department is doing an excellent job of this, make gender equity considerations part of both operational and strategic decisions.

Spencer Again and again Denise and Jenny told me that following Title 9 isn't checking an equity box at meetings. It's a routine like exercising a muscle that should be second nature and they view it as an opportunity, not a restriction.

Denise Oldham But if you are not thinking about it as something that you have to do to not get in trouble, as opposed to a set of principles that might guide the way that you manage, you're much better placed to be in compliance or at least to be able to explain your intent.

Spencer So how does thinking about equity play out in a big athletics department like cows? First let's clear some things up.

Denise Oldham There's a big misconception about Title 9 compliance that everyone has to have absolutely everything matching. You have to have the same level of service, the same kind of facility, et cetera. And there is more flexibility there in terms of measuring equity.

Jenny Simon O'Neill Yeah and we are one of the examples of that is that it costs a fair amount to be able to outfit a football player for competition. You do not need to spend the same number of dollars on the women's side for a cross-country runner, right? You just need to make sure that they're having the same level of equipment. If we're going top-of-the-line equipment for the football players, than on the women's side we need to make sure that we're having on top-of-the-line equipment on their side as well.

Spencer And what about the sports themselves? For example, do we compare men's basketball to women's basketball? Actually, no.

Jenny Simon O'Neill You're not looking at men's soccer versus women's soccer and how their experiences are. You're looking at the entire men's program versus the entire women's program, kind of aggregating those experiences and then comparing them.

Spencer Let's dive deeper. Even though Cal looks at Equity holistically and tries to bake it into decision making processes, there are checkpoints that athletics departments have to hit under Title 9. They can comply in one of three ways, known as the three prongs. Prong 1 is substantial proportionality of intercollegiate athletic opportunity. So what does that actually mean?

Denise Oldham So what that means is you look at the undergraduate enrollment and the percentage of female and male students in that undergraduate enrollment that needs to be proportional to the opportunities that we offer. And to be clear, It's opportunities, it's not people. So there's an indoor, outdoor track and field and cross-country, that's three opportunities even though it may be the same student that's involved in all of them.

Spencer Prong 2 is a history and continued practice of program expansion. And it's pretty rare, only about 6 percent of schools in the country comply this way.

Denise Oldham Consistently be adding sports, probably every three to five years, and they can exist in Prong 2 under that framework.

Spencer Prong 3 is a full accommodation of interests and abilities. This is how Cal complies.

Denise Oldham A lot of different ways that you can assess this. One of the things that I think is important to note is that we added beach volleyball in 2014 and the reason that we did that is because of our compliance with Prong 3. We easily had the interest and the ability and the local competition, a lot of the other practical schools were adding it, so it was by law required that we added it. It was probably also the right thing to do. You know, we get a lot of questions about how and why we added sports when we did and that's the reason.

Spencer That brings us all the way back to where we started the episode: Cal beach volleyball. As Jenny mentioned, Cal added beach volleyball as a D1 sport in 2014, at least in part because of legal obligations to Title 9. As coach Megan Owusu points out, the sport's rise has been pretty remarkable to watch.

Megan Owusu Every single year has just grown and grown. And to think where we are now, getting a brand new facility and we have full time head coach, full time assistant coach, 19 beach volleyball athletes, it's just crazy to think of the timeline.

Spencer Did you catch that? Megan mentioned a new beach volleyball facility. When I asked her to describe where they play now, I got this.

Megan Owusu Our Current courts...? [laughter].

Spencer  So what makes it so laughable?

Megan Owusu To courts that are aligned in different directions and separated with mulch. So just from a cup coach's perspective, almost the worst setup just to coach athletes. You can't walk from one to the other, they're facing different directions and there's only two. right you. Most facilities have four to five courts and so, having 19 athletes on two courts, just forget what the coaches are saying. We could be saying baloney, but if they're not getting the reps, it's really difficult.

Spencer Back to Jenny.

Jenny Simon O'Neill With beach volleyball in particular, we added the sport in 2014. We actually didn't add a facility, we  were using existing recreational sports facilities, and it was time for us to build a division one competitive facility.

Spencer That's right. This past summer, Chancellor Carol Christ sent an email to the Cal community announcing campus's decision to build a new beach volleyball facility. Megan and her team aren't the only women's sport getting new digs. Cal softball will also get a new stadium. In her email, Chancellor Christ said that to remain true to Carl's moral, ethical and legal commitments, she's convinced that we must fund these improvements. And as you've heard, these investments are sorely needed.

Megan OwusuI am so grateful to our administration, to the Chancellor, to our AD.  It shows the investment that they have in the program and it means so much to the team and to the staff.

Spencer  And it's quite the investment.  The two facilities will cost about 30 million dollars total. A reasonable person might say, "that's a lot of money," especially in really tough times for UC Berkeley. Chancellor Christ said the same in her email calling her reaction to that number one of concern and dismay. One reason for the 30 million dollar quote, these projects are big.

Jenny Simon O'Neill Building athletic facilities in this day and age, they're intricate facilities. I mean there is technology...you know we're building a softball stadium. We're not just building a softball field right. So there's gonna be batting cages and there's gonna be equipment rooms and locker rooms and all these different things. So that's not an inexpensive endeavor.

Spencer Cal also faces challenges that come with our location and being a public university.

Jenny Simon O'Neill Number one, we're landlocked, which is a challenge. And we just don't have a lot of different spaces that we can build on, so we've got to make sure that we're utilizing the space that we have. What the Chancellor says is that there are high costs associated with the university's public sector project regulatory requirements, as well as labor expenses for all university sponsored construction. And I think it's expensive to build dorms, academic buildings and all of that. I think that really speaks to it. And ultimately, it's it's also grounded in our principles of doing the right thing. You know, in anything that we do on the campus.

Spencer I asked Denise why it is important to fund these facilities when there are so many worthy needs.

Denise Oldham Equity across any protected category, whether it's racial, ethnic, sex or gender, that is a core principle that has to be woven in to the experience of every student here. The Chancellor has been extremely eloquent on that score. And so, there is no either-or, right? We can't say we won't prioritize gender equity in athletics over feeding hungry students. We're going to try to do it all in the best way that we can. And so with the very limited space, and frankly financial resources that we have, we have to balance things like housing and research space and all kinds of other construction that is core to the university's mission. That has to be prioritized when we're talking about building athletics facilities, which are also important and core to the mission. But we have thousands and thousands of students with all kinds of needs, and so it's a really difficult and challenging decision making process.

Spencer You can see why the words "Title IX"  are a flashpoint. On one hand, Title 9 drives undeniably positive change for female athletes nationwide. It's helped open up opportunities for student athletes like Megan Owusu, herself and alumna of Cal atheltics.

Megan Owusu All of the lessons learned and experienced just by being an athlete, in failing,  getting back up, and working really really hard in achieving a goal or not achieving a goal...all of those lessons just are the best thing for life. They really are. And specifically, Cal...what I experienced as a student athlete here at Cal is why I'm back here.

Spencer On the other, Title 9's part of the reason why a cash-strapped campus is choosing to spend millions on new sports facilities. At the Goldman School,mwe talk about making tough policy choices all the time. Sometimes what's right isn't cheap and isn't easy. In choosing what's right depends a lot on the criteria you're judging on. For Coach Megan, it's not about getting something fancy. It's just about a fair shot for her team.

Megan Owusu The kind of athlete that I want to be a part of this program isn't coming to cal for the glitz and the glamour of the gear and the beautiful facility. Yes it will help and yes it's a necessity but they're coming to get the best education possible and they're coming to be part of a team that will make them better and make their experience as a student athlete the best that it can be.

Spencer While we've made big strides, we've still got work to do in living up to what Title 9 represents and nd getting there can be messy and expensive. I asked the Denise and Jenny what they think when they see a huge crowd at a men's game, and a much smaller one at a women's game.

Jenny Simon O'Neill I'll say disappointed right. I mean I do think that we've come some ways, in terms of a society, in just really understanding the power of women's athletics and how female student athletes there are out there doing incredible things. And a lot of times once you get people in the building to see women's basketball, volleyball or or women's soccer, they're hooked. And women's gymnastics is another one with a really important following, from both younger girls and boys but also their parents and people that just appreciate the sport as a whole. So we're working on it, but I think this is going to need to be a national and even international change.

Denise Oldham I used to go to matches, I used to go early to the women's match, and then the crowd would triple before the men's match. And it to me, it's a huge lost opportunity for parents of children of all genders to be able to see women competing at the highest level.

Spencer But they remain hopeful about the future of equity for our sturdy Golden Bears.

Jenny Simon O'Neill That this Chancellor is quite inspiring to work with. From a Title 9 standpoint, she's a very strong leader who understands Title 9 at its core and is very decisive and is going to make decisions that are student-centered and ensuring that we have equity across our programs. And I really really appreciate that about her.

I'm actually going to quote her letter, as it relates to these new facilities that we're building. She says, "this issue is first and foremost about our values. Specifically the value the university places on gender equity including access to equitable athletics facilities for our male and female student athletes." And that's the core of why we're making the decisions we're making, as it relates to beach volleyball and softball.

Spencer Talk Policy to Me is a production of UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy and the Berkeley Institute for the Future of Young Americans. For show notes, visit us at talkpolicytome.org. Music heard on today's episode is by Pat Mesiti-Miller. Our executive producers are Bora Lee Reed and Sarah Swanbeck. Michael Quiroz is our producer and engineer. I'm Spencer Bowen. See you next time.