For the first time since its passage, Title IX will be used to disadvantage, and ultimately shut down, a coed student organization. And of all post-secondary schools, it will be the Georgia Institute of Technology, known for its conservatism and for having one of the lowest female-to-male ratios of major colleges nationwide, that will do this.
The story is quite simple. The Georgia Tech Barbell Club, which has existed for 50 years and has also existed in its current location for 26 years, has recently reicieved an eviction notice from the Georgia Tech Athletic Association. It explains that for Title IX reasons, it must supply new locker rooms for the Women's Volleyball Team, and it has decided that since they volleyball team
likes to play in the same gym the Barbell Club operates in, that it would be most convenient to kick the Barbell Club out and give the volleyball team their space. At first the administration claimed that we would keep some of our space, but they have decided that they would also take some space for a locker room for visiting volleyball team as well, and as such they are taking everything else. No one was consulted on how this would affect the Barbell Club, or it's students. Which is rather interesting, it seems that the needs of about 15 student athletes are more important than the needs of about 800 students.
There are two major issues here. The first is the deliberate misuse of Title IX. If there was any kind of justice it was supposed to bring, that justice was in the form of help for genuinely disadvantaged female sports programs. However, this is not the issue at hand. The Georgia Tech Women's Volleyball team already has adequate facilities in a different gym that is located approximately 150 feet away from the gym being used by the Barbell Club. Also, hte Women's Volleyball program is so successful that the O'keefe gym, where the Barbell Club operates, is packed to the point that fans must be turned away for many of the volleyball games. This could easily be solved by having them play in the Coliseum gym, where the girls could play in front of up to 10,000 fans (compared to 1,900), and use the
locker rooms they already occupy. Also, the fact that the Women's Track team will not be given new locker rooms despite having to walk across a busy street in order to reach their track field is quite telling that the issue at hand is not a Title IX issue. Also, that little is being done in regards for Women's softball, as they must walk a very long distance to get to their field, is also telling. Simply put, alternatives exist that would satisfy both Title IX regulations and the needs of the Barbell Club, but the Athletic Association is instead
using Title IX as politcal leverage for removing the Barbell Club.
The other issue is one of student's rights. We have discovered that the plans for removing the Barbell Club may have been in the works for as long as two years. But we, the students, did not know anything about this until last september. At that point there was such an outrage from students and alumni that Tech decided not to give up the fight, but to become more decietful. Sometime in January it was decided that the Barbell Club would officially be evicted on July 1, 2005. But we did not learn of this until May 2, wich corresponds to Tuesday of Finals week for the spring semester. The advisor for the Barbell Club learned on that day that he had 60 days to clear out. This conveniently corresponded with the time that students leave for home after finals, and with the time that the Technique, the school newspaper, shuts down until summer semester. This is a deliberate move on the athletic association's part to decieve the general student body about the condition of the Barbell Club until the students largely leave for summer (about 5,000 stay for summer semester), at which point the athletic association would do its dirty work, in hopes the students would not protest.
This is a very bad precedent, as it seems that female student athletes can now be used by any college administration as a leverage for removing any student organization from its on-campus facilities. However, while the administration at Georgia Tech, and the athletic association in particular, have tried to prevent protest as much as possible, they will be getting protest like nothing they've ever seen before. We have already brought in one news station to televise our plight, and we have another four lined up. Students will also be contacting the AJC, the major newspaper of Atlanta. One Barbell Club member has a friend who was instrumental in getting the governor of Georgia, Sonny Perdue, into office, so we hope to have the governor on our side. Yet another man has a sister who is a lawyer, and several alumni know good lawyers. So needless to say, in 60 days we intend to let the Georgia Tech Athletic association that the seizure of the Barbell Club is not just another half-million dollar project.
However, we still need as much help as we can get! These administrators have not listened to reason the few times we gave it to them, and as such we need to let them know that there will be trouble if they do not come to the bargaining table. As such, here are the ways in which you can help.
Go to
http://coweb.math.gatech.edu:8080/barbell to learn about the more technical details of the issue, and to access a list of every administrator that is involved in this process. I hope to soon build a website for the Barbell Club and will give the URL once I buy the web space.
If you know any Georgia Tech Alumni, tell them about what is going on. Do not let Robert Thompson sully Georgia Tech's name by misusing Title IX to destroy a student organization... a coed one at that! (I seems that feminist laws do not even protect women anymore, but only the "useful" ones)
If you know any Georgia Tech faculty, department heads in particular, contact them right away.
If you live in Georgia and have any media connections, PM me and I will get you in contact with the appropriate person.
If you have any connections with the Georgia Board of Regents, the Georgia state government, or any Georgia senators, PM me and I will get you to the right person.
If you have any connections with national media, FOX news in particular, PM me.
Or, if you would simply like to call and/or email the administrators on a daily basis, that would be much appreciated. You should be able to get their names and emails from the site above, and their phone numbers are listed on
www.gatech.eduAlso, to Dr Evil specifically, I know you have told me about the national Men's Rights gathering of some sort that's coming up. Get this issue to the leaders of that conference right away. Not only would help from someone like Glenn Sacks be very useful for us in the sense of saving the club, but it would also be good for bringing forth debate over whether Title IX is really enforcing justice or being used as politcal leverage against students. Which is, of course, one of the major issues at hand here. If it can happen at a highly conservative college that isn't prone to feminism, imagine what more left-leaning colleges will do once Georgia Tech sets this new historical precedent.
And for those who run web sites, please re-post this message onto your site. This could be good as a lead-in to an article/discussion on what Title IX is doing to students in the USA. Keep in mind that there are no feminist voices on our eviction at all, but instead Title IX is being used as part of a turf war going on between a handful of administrators.
To those who help, my deepest thanks.
angelssk7
