NOW Applies Pressure on UCLA, USC

The UCLA and USC athletic departments spend significantly more money on men’s sports than women’s, the California chapter of the National Organization for Women said Thursday in announcing it intends to soon file civil rights complaints against both schools.

Though spending on women’s teams is on the rise at both schools, budgets remain skewed toward men’s sports, NOW spokeswoman Linda Joplin said.

USC, for instance, allocated $683,692, or 20.6% of 1997-98 operating expenses, to women’s sports. That figure is up from $452,117, or 14.5%, the year before, according to an internal USC audit.

A UCLA report indicates that women’s sports were allocated $1.27 million in 1997-98, or 28.7%--up from $969,061, or 27.6%, in 1996-97.

Progress “has been made” at both universities, said Joplin, the Davis-based chair of NOW’s athletic equity committee. Nonetheless, she said there is “still a ways to go” to reach compliance with Title IX, the 1972 federal law that calls for funding and participation parity in college sports.

“We want to make sure we’re not having compliance on the 50-year plan,” Joplin said at a news conference in West Los Angeles.

Todd R. Dickey, USC’s interim general counsel, responded: “We are absolutely committed to compliance with Title IX.” By next fall, for instance, according to the school’s report, it will have added 42 women’s scholarships since 1993; in the 1999-2000 term, those 42 scholarships will be worth $1.3 million.

Similarly, UCLA associate athletic director Betsy Stephenson said, “We have a commitment to complying with Title IX and are actively trying to do that.”

NOW’s plan to file formal complaints with the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights is evocative of a Superior Court lawsuit the activist group filed in 1993 against the California State University system.

That suit produced a settlement intended to bring funding and participation parity to the Cal State system, now 22 campuses, by the current school year, the 1998-99 term.

It won’t be known until next October, when the schools produce internal audits reviewing their 1998-99 programs, whether compliance has been achieved.

NOW’s confrontational approach, meanwhile, also casts a spotlight on the economic tensions inherent in restructuring an athletic program to meet Title IX’s mandate.

In 1997-98, for instance, UCLA spent $295,684 on the women’s basketball team. It spent $552,241 on the men’s team--nearly twice as much.

The men’s team generated nearly $6.89 million in revenue; the women, $160,855.

At USC, the athletic budget in 1997-98 ran to about $28 million. About $9 million was not attributable to men’s or women’s sports but to items such as corporate sponsorships as well as alumni and Pac-10 contributions, associate athletic director Steve Lopes said.

Men’s teams brought in 99.8% of the rest, about $18.4 million. Women’s teams generated $38,729, or 0.2%, according to the audit.