Give Me a C! . . . Give Me a C-Plus! : Policy of requiring higher grades for cheerleaders than for athletes smacks of sexism

Is a cheerleader any more of a role model than the captain of a football team? Hardly. What’s more, a policy that requires members of a high school cheerleading squad--historically female--to have better grades than members of a male athletic team clearly smacks of sexism.

The issue arises from a lawsuit brought against Irvine Unified School District by Melissa Fontes, now 19 and a college student.

Fontes claims she was improperly barred from the cheerleading squad during her senior year at Woodbridge High School because she failed chemistry. Under district policy, cheerleaders were required to maintain a 2.5 grade-point average over the previous two semesters and to not have failed a course the previous quarter. At the same time, athletes needed only to maintain a 2.0 average and pass at least four courses the previous quarter. After Fontes began her formal protest of the differing standards, the district changed its policy slightly. Now it distinguishes between students who participate in “partial-year” extracurricular activities--athletics and band, for example--and “full-year” activities such as student government and pep squads.

But that’s an arbitrary distinction at best. One football player testified during a trial last week that players are expected to participate in several sports during the year in order to earn a spot on the football squad. Football players also know that to be competitive they must devote more than the actual season to conditioning and preparation.

During the two-day trial before Orange County Superior Court Judge Robert Gardner, Irvine Unified Supt. David Brown acknowledged that the district didn’t want to raise its academic standards for interscholastic athletes. He said that might lessen the pool of students available to compete and put a school at a disadvantage. But that brings up the separate question of whether schools are cutting corners on academic standards to accommodate sports teams. Certainly it is a question that would not apply to Irvine alone.

Judge Gardner is expected to rule in the case this week.

Too often, cheerleaders are expected to be more than merely skilled leaders of cheers. They are supposed to be better-looking, smarter and more popular. Athletes aren’t required to match such superfluous standards.

But most important, it’s only fair that the girl cheerleaders and the boy athletes should be held to the same academic standards.