Title IX Is ’92 Issue for U.S. Education Dept. : Athletics: It’s a matter of fair play for men and women. Civil rights office vows to pull laggards’ funds.

A federal inquiry into Cal State Fullerton athletics represents a beefed-up effort to enforce sex discrimination laws in college sports, a U.S. Education Department official said Wednesday.

“From year to year we target certain issues, and Title IX is one of the priority issues this year,” said John Palomino, director of Region 9 of the department’s Office of Civil Rights, which covers California.

His remarks came as Fullerton found itself at the center of a growing national controversy over gender equity in college sports. The school tried to eliminate women’s volleyball in January and landed in court, where a judge Tuesday said he would issue a preliminary injunction that will reinstate the team for now.

The civil rights office also is conducting a review of the Fullerton Athletic Department for possible violations of Title IX, the federal law that requires male and female students to be treated equally in all areas of education.

The court action, the threat of sex-discrimination suits at other schools, a renewed federal interest in sex equity and a recent National Collegiate Athletic Assn. study that shows large disparities in athletic opportunities for men and women have put college administrators on notice: Gender equity cannot be ignored.

“I think it sets the tone that all of us in college and university athletics must pay attention,” said UC Irvine Athletic Director Tom Ford, who admitted that his school is not fully complying with Title IX. “It’s a federal law and a state law. Just because it hasn’t been enforced doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be doing something about it.”

An NCAA gender equity study of the 1990-91 school year, released last week, revealed that men’s athletic teams received almost 70% of the athletic scholarship funds, 77% of the operating funds and 83% of the recruiting funds spent by the 253 NCAA Division I schools that reported.

Women’s sports advocates say the findings clearly show that Division I schools are not complying with Title IX.

“It confirmed what everyone else already knew--that there is blatant, wholesale violations of Title IX going on,” said Arthur Bryant, executive director for Washington’s Trial Lawyers for Public Justice. “It points out a need for a uniform, national enforcement strategy, and I hope the Office of Civil Rights will enforce the law more diligently.”

The civil rights office has the power to pull federal funding from universities that don’t follow the rules.

“That kind of threat is more than enough to get an institution in compliance,” Bryant said.

The threat of a lawsuit can also be effective. Bryant in recent years has represented the William & Mary women’s basketball and swimming teams, the Oklahoma women’s basketball team and the New Hampshire women’s tennis team, all victims of university budget cuts.

But after filing or threatening suits against the three schools, all three cases were settled out of court, and each team was reinstated.

“Bryant strings together three or four wins in a row, and it’s like a perfect game,” said Donna Lopiano, new executive director of the New York-based Women’s Sports Foundation. “All of a sudden, if you drop a (women’s) sport, you’re dead meat.”

Though the Office of Civil Rights circulated a memorandum warning college presidents to take Title IX considerations into account when they drop teams, Cal State Fullerton President Milton A. Gordon defended his school’s decision to drop volleyball.

“I think we were correct in the analysis and the rationale for making that decision,” Gordon said. “And if we have a further opportunity to present our case, we will do so. . . . I’m disappointed that this has been an issue because we certainly intended to provide more opportunity rather than less opportunity for women.”

Opportunity seems to be at the center of the Title IX issue.

The NCAA study found that Division I colleges comply with portions of Title IX because female athletes receive scholarship support roughly in proportion to their representation on teams--females made up 30.9% of the athletes at the Division I schools that responded to the survey and received 30.5% of the scholarship money.

But there is a great discrepancy between the ratio of men and women in the overall student body and men and women on athletic teams, another gauge of Title IX compliance. Female students slightly outnumber males at Division I schools, but male athletes outnumber females, 70% to 30%.

Women make up 52.5% of the student population at UC Irvine but account for only 33.7% of athletes. Fullerton’s student body is 54.7% female compared to just 28% of its athletes.

Ford pointed out that a main reason UCI fares slightly better than NCAA averages is because the school does not sponsor football, a sport that has a dramatic effect on expenditures because of the high number of participants and because there is no equivalent women’s sport.

He said that rather than cut men’s sports, he would prefer to add women’s sports.

“Eventually, I would like to see women’s golf at UCI,” Ford said. “Yet I’m afraid what happens across the country is they’re cutting men’s sports in order to balance the equity situation. We don’t want to do that. I don’t think it’s fair to the men.”

Gordon predicted that it will be very difficult for many universities to fully comply with Title IX.

“If you look at almost any university’s athletics (department) with a football program, it would be rather difficult to have an even count (of men and women in sports),” said Gordon, whose school is considering adding women’s soccer and golf.

But as the costs of running scholarship-level football programs escalate and public funds grow increasingly tight, Gordon predicted that many heads of public universities and colleges across the country are going to have to re-evaluate priorities.

Whether they can afford men’s football and still provide more opportunities for women “is a question that is going to have to be answered by all athletic university programs across the country,” Gordon said.

Women’s sports advocates say the answer is simple. Schools that can’t generate more funds for women’s sports must reapportion existing funds to create a more equitable situation.

At Washington State University, the threat of a lawsuit spurred the athletic department into a fund-raising campaign to add several women’s sports, and 44% of the school’s athletes are now women. The Washington State student body is 45% female.

UCI improved its support of women’s basketball last year, adding a second assistant coaching position and upgrading salaries, even as the other programs in the department received cuts totaling more than $500,000.

“We have made strides to improve,” Ford said. “(The women’s basketball funding) was our first step in recognizing that there was a disparity, and we need to emphasize improvement in women’s programs.”

Often, schools are jolted into change.

“In the end, three things are going to make change happen at large bureaucracies that don’t want to change,” Lopiano said. “Bad press, litigation--it costs a lot of money--and the financial hammer of the recent Supreme Court decision (ruling that victims of sex discrimination could sue their schools for punitive damages).”

Strangely enough, experts say, the budget crunch at most universities might have actually helped further the cause of women’s athletics. Financially strapped schools attempt to drop women’s sports, and the ensuing publicity surrounding the lawsuits and reinstatement of those sports helped focus attention on Title IX and served as an educational tool for school administrators.

“Essentially, a lot of people haven’t looked at Title IX in a long time, and there’s been a lot of misinformation and ignorance about it,” said Kathryn Reith, Women’s Sports Foundation communications director and an expert on Title IX.

“I’ve spoken to athletic directors who say you don’t count football under Title IX, but you do. They’ll say they’re in compliance if they have an equal number of men’s and women’s teams, but that’s not necessarily true. People who are supposed to know Title IX don’t know the details that it requires.”

But many are learning--and some the hard way.

“I would like to think universities will come into compliance with Title IX because it’s the right thing to do,” Bryant said. “Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened. I thought after the Oklahoma case schools wouldn’t eliminate teams because of budget crunches, but William & Mary and New Hampshire showed that’s not true.

“I would like to think by now they’re learning a lesson, based on history, but I’m not that optimistic. It really is time for the NCAA and university presidents to show some leadership on the issue and get in compliance with the law.”

Times staff writers Kristina Lindgren and Robyn Norwood contributed to this story.