University Daily Kansan, November 9, 1981
Opinion
Unequal promotion of sports perpetuates unequal returns
Ah, the question of women's sports. Aren't you tired of hearing about it? "Title IX, this Title IX that. Wouldn't it be nice just to forget the whole mess?"
Those are exactly the sentiments of the University of Kansas athletic department.
There has been a controversy for years over how much funding women's athletics should get. And indeed, the athletic department has an elegant argument against funding them equally.
It goes something like this. Only men's football and basketball produce revenue. If the athletic department cut funding for men's sports to promote women's sports, the men's program would be more likely to would go downhill and they wouldn't be able to produce the revenue to support women's sports.
It makes sense to me then that the athletic department would try to develop a following for women's sports so that they could support
they were named properly
An elegant argument isn't it?
So you see, women's athletics would be hurt if they were funded properly.
CINDY
CAMPBELL
themselves. To build such a following, however, the athletic department needs to promote women's sports just as much as it pushes the men's.
Don Marquis, KU professor of philosophy and a former SenFx member. agrees.
"I think it's morally outrageous that the athletic department has policies that perpetuate inequality," he said last week. "I'd like to know if all of those women who are on the athletic board."
"It's really too bad. One would hope we'd eventually have revenue-producing sports on the women's side too, and then we could fund equally. But to do that, we need to push those women's basketball tickets at least as hard as we push the men's tickets."
The present policies ensure that women's sports will never be as popular as men's sports.
John Weltmer, a former KU assistant sports information director, said, "In my opinion, there's no question that the administration in the athletic department never intends for women's basketball to be as popular as men's basketball."
Weltner said that the most blatant example of inequality came last season.
"Last year we had the best women's player in the country in Lynette Woodard. That was evident when she won the Wade Trophy. They played a lot more to promote that." Weltmer said.
Last year Woodard accepted the Wade Trophy for being the best women's basketball player in the country. The Wade is the women' equivalent to the Heisman for men.
At the formal awards banquet held in New York, only Woodard and coach Marian Washington represented KU. For the first time in the history of the Wade Trophy, the president and athletic director of the winner's school weren't in attendance.
Only months before, Bob Marcus, athletic director, Sid Wilson, sports information director, and Jake McKinney, athletic director,
Fund, had flown off to Atlanta to persuade Pence of the official acceptance of a bowl bid. The team was a gamble, and we lost.
No, KU did not play in the Peach Bowl last year. All those travel expenses were for nothing. Woodward had the Wade in her hand. There was no gamble there. But then again, she was only a shot.
Weltmer said there were many other things the athletic department did to perpetrate incarceration.
For instance, since the merger of the two athletic departments in July 1979, no posters have been printed to regularly promote KU women's basketball, while four-color glossy posters with pictures of the men's team are printed every year at tremendous expense.
Weltner said that he knew through his involvement with the sports information department that fewer and smaller press releases and statistic sheets on the women's games were sent out to the media. When they were sent out, he said, they were grossly inaccurate.
Weltmer also said that spectators at the women's games were treated discoureteously. Rarely are the lower bleachers, those close to the camera, from the wall, pulled out for spectators to sit on.
"Essentially, they're just not being consistent," Weltmater said. "Even when they have a men's game the next day they won't pull out of it, because of course people want to sit downstairs first."
It is true that the attendance at a women's basketball game rarely exceeds 2,000 or 3,000, but those spectators deserve the same courtesy and respect as the men's fans do.
"I think if they made any real attempt to promote it, they could get 1,000 people there
Even when the women's team did draw a record crowd last year during the Big Eight finals against Kansas State University, the attendance was reported at 7,350. But according to a source in the athletic business office, more than 5,000 fans were actually at the game.
"It's kind of a conscious effort to show how few people come." Weltner said.
In contrast, at the K-State-KU football game in October, the attendance was reported at 51,600, which would be the third largest crowd ever at a KU game. Yet, another nervous source in the KU game was that only 40,500 tickets were sold and that any attendance figure could only be a rough estimate.
Oh well, who cares about a few thousand people? Who cares that the men's attendance may be consistently reported high and women's low? For that matter, who cares about women's sports? Obviously not the KU athletic department.
The University Daily Kansas welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten, double-spaced and not exceed 500 words. They should include the writer's name, address and phone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, the letter should include the class and home town or faculty or staff position. The Kanan reserves the right to edit or reject letters.
Letters policy
Letters to the Editor
Affirmative action helpful in job market
To the Editor:
This letter is in response to David Henry's
concern. "Policy of affirmative action obsolete"
N.2, Kraig S.
Although I feel that affirmative action is not a permanent solution to the problem of discrimination, I do feel that it is useful as a temporary restraint against employers who might be inclined not to give minorities and women an equal opportunity for employment.
In the coming years, as we use affirmative action as a temporary restraint to the problem of
Being white males in a white man's world, it is difficult for Mr. Henry or myself to comprehend the feeling of being discriminated against in the job market. Right next to us, thousands of women and minorities have been hired at meager wages to perform the same jobs as men. It is important that you are outright denied employment because they happened to be the wrong sex or the wrong color.
Although I agree that affirmative action will never solve the problem of discrimination in the job world, at least it is a piece of legislation that forces the employer to take a second look at that female or minority's application. And if, after the second look, the employer hires the woman or minority candidate and he or she performs as well, as or even better than, a male counterpart, then at least one person is shown that women and men are just as capable as white men. This realistic portrayal of an upward direction, and without affirmative action, this step would be only a dream.
injuncture in the job world, why don't we as a society rid ourselves of the numerous stereotypes and accept our neighbors as human beings with real feelings and emotions?
Then, affirmative action will happily become extinct.
Timothy J. Smith
Kalamazoo, Mich.. freshman
Not 'genuine equality' To the Editor:
David Henry's editorial on the nature of affirmative action was misleading double talk.
Affirmative action does not "announce the inferiority of minorities." Affirmative action does announce that white males must give up the special privileges they have because of their race and sex. As a woman, I need affirmative action plans not because I am inferior, but because so many men refuse to give up these privileges unless forced to do so.
In a desperate effort to hang on to their special status, some opponents of affirmative action claim that they have believed in equality all along. If women and minorities have been considered equal, why the social and economic inequalities between women and men? Between blacks and whites? Why don't these egalitarians put their money where their mouth are?
"Genuine equality" without equal pay or job opportunities is meaningless. No thanks, Davi,
Gail Boaz Prairie Village senior
Gail Roay
Prairie Village senior
Sculpture has energy To the Editors
To the Editor:
I am appalled at the insensitivity of the supposedly civilized human beings who are vandalizing Dale Eldred's "Salma Piece," both verbally and physically.
We are living in a community that is exposed to many different forms of personal expression, language and expression.
But your techniques of criticism convey a much lower mentality; unless, of course, your television reception has been interrupted by the presence of this fine work of art.
Perhaps you are just venting your frustration at having missed your nightly dose of sex and violence because someone tried to make you think about the real experiences of life. Then again, maybe life has no meaning without "Charlie's Angels" or "Three's Company."
Blatant heterosexuality now positively disgusting
At least you have received some of the course that was put into this sculpture, which is the sign of a successful work of art. It's just too bad you were not able to get the letteringetter mankind, one of the functions of the arts.
Heterosexuality is rampant, a friend from the West Coast observed recently
No longer content to practice this behavior in the privacy of their own homes, new brazen militants are flaunting their sexuality right into hotels in restaurants, in theaters, even on the street.
I know it's almost too terrible to read in print, but I think my friend is right. I'm not sure if I should avoid discussing. Some zealots are, of course, reacting to this new militancy with outright
disgust, calling for a mass heterosexual exiling to Las Vegas or Honolulu, places where large groups of them congregate anyhow.
DAVID
HENRY
In fact, right here in Lawrence, a town long known for its permissiveness, I’m confronted
Last weekend, while minding my own business, shopping downtown, I saw men and women walking hand-in-hand or with their arms around each other.
And if that wasn't enough to set my teeth on edge, I then saw heterosexuals kissing right in front of the Pizza Hat. These weren't pecks on the cheek, either. I mean, some serious physical interaction was placed right before suspecting eyes. I lost my appetite for lunch.
Although I feel we should adopt a more tolerant attitude, it seems heterosexuality has been reduced.
If I was Dale Fldred, or John Simpson, I would consider your slander as a compliment in that I was able to make you use it part of your mind, which apparently is not used to its full capacity.
Attempting to escape my indigestion, I decided to take in an afternoon matinee. Was that the silliest choice I've ever made. Not only was the screen explicitly showing me a woman in the middle of a dance (with some new and even more disgusting variations, too), but the place was filled with
young adolescents breaking down the barriers between art and life.
I fled to the library to read a magazine, trying to take my mind off the day's events, only to find more of the same perversion. Serious articles putting heterosexual relationships in a positive light were followed by page after page of advertisements with half-naked heterosexual couples selling blue jeans and cologne.
What goes on inside should come as no surprise. Heterosexuals, when they gather with their own kind, become even more decadent. Women almost always wear tight-fitting clothing to entice the men; for their safety and comfort, they wear a lot of Aramis. In many ways they all look alike.
Most distressing of all is how this affects impressionable young children. Consider, for example, what I witnessed last summer at the Lawrence Municipal Pool, a place where parents innocently drop off their children for the afternoon. Time after time, I saw men and women separated only by the thinnest layer of a bathing suit. And on countless other occasions, I watched American beauties making eyes at members of the opposite sex.
Every month it seems as though another heterosexual meeting place—usually a bardisco combination—opens in the area. Newspaper ads and radio commercials blare the news and bright neon lights make sure we visit the place. No discretion whatsoever.
It was too much to bear in one afternoon.
And in this setting, anything goes. I've seen behavior too bizarre to admit to having seen, let alone to print. I'll have to leave it to your imagination.
I admit that we live in a more permissive age today and that children grow up faster than they used to. But somewhere we have to deal with the challenges of liberal-minded and being overly permissive.
This unabashed display doesn't end when the sun goes down elsewhere. In fact, I'm convin- ce that it's an artifact of the
I know what you're probably thinking. You
Okay, you have a point. Sort of. You see, the more adventurous among us go just to see what really happens. And like I said before, 't's too weird for words.
think I'm hypocritical to criticize heterosexuals on Monday after going to their hangouts on Saturday night.
It's sometimes not easy to be tolerant of
heterosexuals' outandish behavior or their new found militancy.
But try to have compassion for them. After all, they honestly believe that they didn't choose their heterosexuality. They believe, heaven only knows how, that they were wrong. But worst of all, they not only think they cannot change, but most of them don't even want to.
Kenton Knowles
Kenton Knowles Salina senior
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