ATHLADY

May 2013

Chelsea RobieBomber

Gymnastics’ newest face page 10

—Ouch! Doesn’t that hurt...

May’s Do-Gooder

Kaitlin Hardy flips with fruit flies for a good

cause page 3

40 years after Title IX passing, has anything changed?

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ATHLADYMay3 FACES of EpilepsyCornell Gymnast Kaitlin Har-dy was diagnosed with ep-ilepsy at age 19. Now she’s helping others with the dis-ease.

7 Title IX 40 years laterOn it’s 40 year anniversary, has the legislation changed anything?

12 Chelsea RobieA one on one with the news-est star of Bomber Gymnas-tics

14 In syncThe Ithaca College synchro-nized skating team is ready for their own rink

16 Bump and DiveVolleyball girls take on a challenge

Everything elseyou need

5 It’s ok if...A list of this month’s latest fe-male athlete woes

10 Run girlA workout playlist you need to download ASAP

17 Does this look ok?Ten essential workout items you need

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Kaitlin Hardy has taken a message of understanding to 14 elementary schools in Tompkins County about liv-ing and succeeding with epilepsy. She knows the topic well. When she was 19, she had to take a medical leave from Cor-nell University because of epilepsy. During her recovery she developed a program, FACES: Facts, Advocacy, and Control of Epileptic Seizures to assist people with seizure disorders manage epilepsy and build self-esteem.

Athlady’s May Do-Gooder

Cornell gymnast raises awareness for epilepsyBy Megan Goldschmidt

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So far through FACES, Hardy and her co-founder, Daniel Nicholls, helped to start a research lab component entirely run by undergraduate students. The students conduct experiments with various seizure medications on fruit flies and record the effects. She has published a children’s book with Nicholls called “Baseballs and Little Falls,” about epilepsy and seizures. The two also have regular speaking engagements to inform audiences about living with seizures. Ann Dipetta, a Trumansburg mother whose son has epilepsy, attended one of Hardy’s speaking engagements about seizure disor-der, and was in tears. “I felt a variety of things. I felt admiration for her as a person because she is strong and intelli-gent and very brave. I also felt appreciation for the work that she is doing and the support she pro-vides to other people who are facing similar challenges.” Dipetta said that Hardy and FACES helps her child to connect with other people that are facing the same issue, and that in turn helps her as a parent because it’s hard to know how to help her child sometimes. “Having peers who are going through the same thing is so valuable. Not even just peers but friends; people in your life who are going through the same its really valuable and you don’t feel so alone. As a parent, I see how important research is, and probably the most important thing for me is that my child is well served and is getting the proper doses of medication that are safe,” Dipetta said. “So in that regard, I so appreciate the work that she’s doing. Its really so broad and so well rounded; she provides sort of this personal support and inspiration but also really valuable scientific work.”

Hardy first started having seizures in high school, but after suffering a concussion at gymnastics practice during her freshman year of college, went home on doctor’s orders and could not drive or practice for six months. “It’s really embarrassing. You draw a lot of attention to yourself. If you’re a person who has a seizure people think it’s a huge deal and don’t know how to act around you. I didn’t want to be seen with the girl with all of these problems,” Hardy said. While home on leave and under her grandparents care, Hardy remembered something one of her sports medicine doctors said about a hockey player at Cornell who also had epilepsy. She sent him an email, initially not even thinking about starting an organization. She just wanted to talk to another student athlete who would know exactly what she was going through. That hockey player was Nicholls. Hardy said Nicholls is the reason her attitude about epilepsy changed. “Yeah tremendously, it’s like night and day. We would do speaking events and talk about our situations. I would have everyone in tears and he would have everyone laughing hysterically. He is a person who solidified in my mind that it isn’t something to be embarrassed about; it’s better to make light of it,” Hardy said. In the next couple of years, Hardy’s biggest goal is to take FACES national. “I keep telling people that I want FACES to be as big a campaign as Autism Speaks,” Hardy said. “Epilepsy is more common than autism, and I would love to help people to the same extent that Autism Speaks has. I think this is just the starting point now and I hope we can continue to expand and move outward.”

“It’s really embarrassing. You draw a lot of attention to yourself. If you’re a person who has a seizure people think it’s a huge deal and don’t know how to act

around you. I didn’t want to be seen with the girl with all of these problems.”

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It’sOkayIf...

- You aregoing to missseeingDerek Jeter,and his body,on the field.

- You’re trying to fit in as many gym sessionsas possible before summer.

- You didn’t really care if Louisville had an injured player, you still didn’t want them to win.

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-You want to hitMike Rice in the head with a basketball.

- You can’t wait two more years for the FIFA Women’s World Cup.It’s not ok if....You think Brittney Griner won’t make the NBA.

40 years after Title IX was passed, disparities

still exist Forty years ago, Title IX was enacted to prevent gender discrim-ination in education programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance.

Today it is most associated with sports, where notable progress has been made. Yet in other areas, disparities remain. The legislation, part of the Education Amendments of 1972, actually covers issues including sexual harass-ment, unequal oppor-tunities in athletics and discrimination based on pregnancy, the National Center for Education Statistics states. But the focus shifted from academics to sports, where there was a flagrant lack of fairness, and Title IX was used to level the playing field, said Mary Jo Kane, director of the University of Minne-sota’s Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women and an expert on gender discrimina-tion in sports. “For example, I’m a professor and I come forward and say I am being discrim-inated against because I have written two

more articles than my male counterpart and he’s making more money,” Kane said. “His counterclaim could be that mine are in less prestigious journals. It’s a hard thing to deter-mine. “But when you have 12 sports with conferences, coaches and uniforms for men and nothing for women in an institution paid for by tax dollars, it’s pretty obvious.” Emily Dane, assistant professor of sport studies at St. John Fisher College, be-

lieves the reason Title IX is associated with sports so much has to do with American culture. When she was growing up, she was affected by the legis-lation through open access to any sport and did not even know it. “Super Bowl Sun-day is a religious hol-iday for some people; for others the Masters is on and it’s ‘I will take four days off of work because I want to watch what happens

at Augusta,’” Dane said. “So when there is this idea about sport being threatened in any way, the historical context of what it means to be a male athlete, people take notice.

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“We don’t hear about those types of other cases that are part of the legislation, be-cause we have so much of a focus on sports.” In terms of academics, women earn the majority of degrees at the collegiate level, but their numbers lag in science, technology, engineering and math. Females make up only 25 percent of the science, technology, engi-neering, and mathematics workforce. Kevin McDonald, vice president and associate provost for diversity and inclusion at Rochester Institute of Technology, finds disparities even with all of the progress Title IX has brought. “Only 18 percent of undergraduate engineering degrees are received by women,” McDonald said. “Think about career education and vocational offerings, automo-tive or electrician fields-those are still heavily dominated by men. Our university is very committed to trying to share those fields with women.” On the sports end, the Women’s Sports Foundation reports, some 294,000 girls com-peted in high school sports the year before Title IX became law; in 2011, the number was nearly 3.2 million. At the college level, 170,000 more women are playing sports than four decades ago.

Uneven progress Yet, WSF figures show, women make up 56 percent of college students but 43 percent of student-athletes. Dane attributes the skewed ratio to leaders, college adminis-trators and athletic directors who may claim lack of funds, inadequate facilities or low interest in a particular program. “They will say there isn’t enough mon-ey, yet if people look at college tuition rates,

it’s obvious there is funding to make things happen,” she said.Progress also is hindered by people who say women athletes are not real athletes, Dane said. “We live in a gendered society and some people still hold a lot of stock in what women and men shall do,” she said. Dane, who did a lecture project in 2009 on Title IX, found roughly 18 percent of col-leges are in compliance with the three-prong test set forth by the law. Schools must meet at least one criterion to comply. The first prong is proportionality: The enrollment of the undergraduate students, male-to-female, has to be proportionate to the athlete population.The second prong is the history in continuing practices that show consistent efforts over a period of time. The third is demand: If all of the stu-dent body’s interest is being met, then no addition is required. “Up until recently the way in which athletic departments were funded was by stu-dent fees,” Kane said. “Well, female students paid the same amount as male students, but the return on that investment was that athlet-ic budgets for females on average nationwide was about 2 to 3 percent of what men got. It was a very clear case of gender discrimina-tion.” The problem with the language of the law, Dane said, is it is vague and difficult to define. For proportionality, some courts have granted a 5 percent leeway in the ratio. She is unsure of the definition in terms of history in continuing practices: Does five years of a continued women’s tennis program constitute history?

There is no way to measure satisfaction of the third criterion, because student interest could be defined by any number of things, from the current student body to incoming freshmen to high school students being recruited for that institution.

Bridging the gap Another setback Dane points to is the lack of awareness among the younger generation. Most children quit sports by 14, and more girls than boys leave by that age, she said. Dane would like to know why they leave, and she asks for more education on the benefits of staying on the playing field. She cites a now-infamous quote by tennis player Jennifer Capriati, who was asked how Title IX would affect future generations, and her response was, “I don’t know what Title IX is, sorry.” “I think this lack of aware-ness is also one of the biggest threats to the law,” Dane said. “If women and girls don’t know what the reason for their opportunity is, they may not realize what they need to fight for if the law is being challenged.” RIT, because it wants to be a model for Title IX, uses consul-tants to take stock of its programs and efforts in terms of athletics and education. They provide thoughts and recommendations as RIT moves forward, McDonald said. For George VanderZwaag, director of athletics and recreation at the University of Rochester, Title IX has been hugely con-sequential to every decision he

makes about program growth and development. While he said many programs struggle to meet the re-quirements, his is not one of them. “It’s part of the fabric of trying to make difficult decisions; it’s a constant part of what we do, to make sure we meet the legal requirements. I don’t struggle with it,” VanderZwaag said. One great myth around Title IX is it takes away from men’s athletics, Kane said. She believes the fault lies with athletic direc-tors. “If an athlet-ic director doesn’t have as many women participating as men, they typically have three options to get in compliance,” she said. One option is to add a women’s sport like tennis. “And it’s going to cost up to $800,000 a year of recurring money you don’t have for a sport where you’re never going to make a dime,” Kane said. “Your other option is to drop a men’s sport like gymnastics and save. The third option is to walk down the hall and say to the football coach, ‘You don’t get to stay in hotels every night before a home game or fly on private jets to recruit,’” she add-ed. “What athletic directors do when faced with the arms race is drop a men’s sport and say, ‘Don’t blame me. Title IX made me do it.’ It’s been a convenient scapegoat.” Though many people

associate Title IX with sports, Dane said only some 10 percent of complaints filed with the Office of Civil Rights, the organization that deals with Title IX violations, have to do with athletics. The other 90 percent have to do with other forms of discrimination in education. McDonald takes stock of Title IX complaints around RIT. Sexual harassment complaints, not just on his campus, but by and large, are the most common viola-

tions, he said. The progress of Title IX in the next 40 years depends on making sure it stays at the fore-front in the minds of leaders. “It is easy to look at the progress it has made and rest on those past laurels,” McDonald said. “We have to continue to push ourselves and look for equality, and I think if we can do that, then we will be able to bridge those gaps.” -Megan Goldschmidt

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