Athletics

My first introduction to writing professionally was as a sports writer for a couple of newspapers in West Virginia. The assignments were simple – go to the games, follow the action, report on what you saw, and occasionally offer commentary and features on the athletes and events.

That’s easy enough given my admiration for sports. I’ve always believed that sports were a great avenue in helping boys and girls to learn about character and to gain self-respect. I recall vividly a number of athletes who attributed part of their maturity to lessons learned on the playing field.

Even with my admiration for sports, I have a hard time justifying the continued support for Title IX, which celebrated its 35th anniversary over the weekend. The law, which was included in the Education Act of 1972, simply states that programs that receive federal support cannot discriminate on the basis of gender. While it did not specifically mention athletics, the language triggered a growth in the number of collegiate athletic opportunities for women.

Last spring, 88 Duke faculty members signed a public statement stating unequivocally that something “happened” to the accuser in the Duke lacrosse case. They promised to “turn up the volume” regarding the “social disaster” the lacrosse players had unleashed. And the professors said “thank you” to widely publicized protesters who had put up “wanted” posters with the lacrosse players’ photos while carrying signs reading “Time to confess” and “Castrate” outside the lacrosse players’ house.

The “Group of 88” included Kim Curtis, who before late March had compiled a lengthy if unspectacular tenure as a longtime visiting political science professor. Then came the lacrosse incident. For faculty members predisposed to an extreme version of the race/class/gender trinity, the case was too tempting not to exploit. Before signing onto the Group of 88’s statement, Curtis attended rallies denouncing the players (background, in this photo). On March 29, she emailed fellow Durham activists expressing outrage that defense attorneys had (correctly) stated that no DNA match would occur to any lacrosse player. “The self assurance,” wrote Curtis,

in the statement issued yesterday by the team that they will be exonerated by the results of the DNA testing makes me wonder if we’ve gotten the full story about who was at the house that night. Were there others present who in fact carried out the rape and who are being protected by everyone else who was there? How do we know who was there?

It is often said that the United States has the best system of higher education in the world, and certainly North Carolinians take pride in their universities. But readers of these pages know that the image often differs from the reality.

While there are some excellent courses, all too frequently students are getting trendy and shallow courses such as those described in CJ’s Course of the Month. As George Leef has written, academic standards are falling, even while grades are going up. Today, college graduation is more a rite of passage than a sign of accomplishment.
How do we get our universities to adopt a more rigorous curriculum and provide young people with an education that values liberty, limited government, and free markets? These are questions that the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy has asked and will continue to address.