Ball State University's slogan, 'Education Redefined,' isn't limited to the classroom. It also applies to athletics. The Ball State athletic department is currently reviewing its plan toward the Education Act of 1972, more commonly known as Title IX.
The Act states no person in the United States can be prevented from participating in activities of any program funded by the U.S. government.
Athletic Director Tom Collins said Ball State created a five-year plan for Title IX compliance in 2001. However, the plan expired at the start of the Spring semester and the university is currently drafting an updated plan.
The plan Collins and his staff are currently creating will also be a five-year plan.
Title IX has three prongs a college or university can choose between in order to comply with the governmental act. An institution must meet the requirements of only one prong in order to comply with Title IX.
The 1979 Policy Interpretation of Title IX made by the U.S. Department of Education describes the first prong as the opportunities provided for male and female students at the intercollegiate level must be proportionate to the percentages of each sex in the instution's student body. The school does not have to be exact in the percentages but must demonstrate attempts to make the percentages as close as possible.
According to the act, the second prong is the continuing practice of providing more opportunities to a sex that is underrepresented at the intercollegiate level.
The final prong, according to the act, is proving the interests and abilities of an underrepresented sex are met by the current program at the intercollegiate level.
Associate Athletic Director and Senior Woman Administrator Nona Richardson said Ball State uses the second prong in complying with Title IX.
"Enhance and expand," Richardson said. "What we have done over time is added women's sports as they've gotten more popular."
Both Collins and Richardson said by utilizing the second prong, Ball State is in compliance with Title IX.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, from July 1, 2005 to June 30, 2006, Ball State's total undergraduate enrollment was 15,904. The U.S. Department of Education only counts undergraduates towards enrollment.
Of these students, 8,179 (51.4 percent) are female and 7,725 (48.6 percent) are male.
However, according to the U.S. Department of Education, Ball State had 235 (55.7 percent) male unduplicated players (athletes who play multiple sports are counted only once) and 187 (44.3 percent) female unduplicated athletic participants in the 2005-06 school year.
110 of the male athletes come from football. By taking football out of the equation, that leaves 125 male athletes, dropping the male percentage from 55.7 percent to 40.1 percent.
Collins and Richardson both said that Ball State also attempts to comply with Title IX through the money given to male and female sports.
According to U.S. Department of Education figures, during the 2005-06 school year Ball State allocated $1.27 million (68.3 percent) toward male sports and $588,883 (31.7 percent) toward female sports.
"There are sports that get more money then other sports," Richardson said. "That can be based on whether or not it is a core sport of the conference, whether or not that sport has been successful, what the competitive level is, if there's a new coach coming in and what are they bringing to the table and whether or not they are capable of bringing to the table."
However, football accounts for 55.8 percent of the men's budget. If you remove football, the male percentage of total money allocated to athletic teams at Ball State would fall from 68.3 percent to 48.8 percent.
"As long as football is in the mix the budget will never be level," Richardson said. "Their equipment costs a lot more, they're bigger guys so they eat a lot more, the coaches recruit nationally. Those are things that aren't conducive to a lot of the other programs."
Despite football making it impossible for Ball State to equalize sport's budgets, Richardson said football can't just be eliminated from the equation in order to balance the budget.
"They are a sport under the umbrella of the NCAA, of conferences, of institutions," Richardson said. "If you're going to have them then you have to count them."
Richardson said some other way must be created to look at budgets and the percentage of athletes at institutions.
Different sports need different things, some more then others, Richardson said.
"A gymnastics team isn't going to need what a men's basketball team needs, gymnastics isn't going to need what a women's basketball team needs," Richardson said. "So you got to look at the whole picture. You make sure that they are funded to levels that you expect them to be so that they are competitive in conference."
There are some things no institution can plan for in teams' budgets, Collins said.
"One thing we have absolutely no control over is surgeries," Collins said. "One year you might have ten surgeries and the next year you may have one; it's one of those things."
Collins said the athletic department does give every sport money for injuries each year, but it's still not always going to cover what a specific team needs.
"You can put in a number and say this is what the average has been for health care in the last five years, but you may have that one year where all of a sudden everything goes bad or somebody has a real tricky surgery," Collins said.
A college or university could comply by equalizing the percentages of its budgets to the percentages of revenues brought in by the different teams.
In the 2005-06 school year, Ball State made a total of $14.54 million athletically, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Of that, $11.94 million came from revenue not allocated by gender or sport, better known as donations.
Ball State athletic teams in 2005-2006 brought in $2,597,722. Of that total, $2,397,859, or 92.3 percent, came from male sports, leaving $199,863, or 7.7 percent, generated by female sports, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
Collins said the main thing he wants to see done at Ball State in relation to the new plan is to have a plan other collegiate institutions respect and look up to.
"I would like for us to be a model for gender equity and Title IX," Collins said. "I would like all of our student athletes to be able to say 'I had a great four-year career here. I'm walking away with a degree and somewhere along the line I got a MAC Championship ring.' I think that would be the greatest thing."
Collins said the aspect Ball State needs the most improvement in is resources, which is the amount of money Ball State has to give to the different sports teams.
"We're not any different then Indiana [University] or anybody else," Collins said. "You want to be able to provide your coaches with the resources necessary to go out and recruit who they want to recruit, travel where they want to travel, get the uniforms they want or the special equipment they need or whatever it is."
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