Deflating Title IX: Gender Equity in Athletics Under Attack

On Feb. 8, one small historic symbol of the inequity faced by female athletes will be rectified at Illinois State University when female athletes gather in Normal for a special banquet to redress a past injustice. These alumna will finally receive the varsity letters that, until 1989, were only granted to male athletes.

But while these women are finally given the honors they earned decades ago, in Washington, D.C., Bush Administration officials will be busy finalizing plans to gut Title IX, the 1972 law that helped improve opportunities for female athletes across the country.

Title IX has powerful enemies. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (D-Il.), a former wrestler, has denounced the law for the impact on his favorite sport. Education Secretary Rod Paige was a football coach at Texas Southern. Among the members of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce is Tom Osborne (R-Neb.), the former head football coach at the University of Nebraska. George W. Bush himself campaigned against "strict proportionality." [Full Article]

Spending on Sports: ISU's Quest for "Champions"

The ISU sports empire is a tiny one by the standards of big-time college athletics, but it got a little bigger last week with the "groundbreaking" on the dirt floor of Redbird Arena's basement, which is being covered with concrete for a brand new strength and conditioning center. At 9,500 square feet, ISU's planned strength and conditioning center will be far larger than any other in the Missouri Valley Conference, and more than twice the size of the average. "We will have one of the premier strength-training facilities in the nation," declared Robert Lindsey, Head Strength and Conditioning Coach.

But why does a third-rate athletics program like Illinois State need one of the best training facilities in the nation? Although the capital campaign slogan, "Investing in Champions," may seem comical in the face of one of the worst men's basketball teams in school history, it is more serious to think that athletes are getting a state-of-the-art conditioning facility while other students have few recreational areas and the rest of school is facing some of the worst budget cuts in the history of ISU.

The ISU athletics department notes that all of the money for this center (and the special club for big donors and hall of fame they hope to add later) comes from donations. But how many of these donors might otherwise give money to support academic programs? And what if the athletic department had to use donations to cover operating losses instead of using them to finance increasingly impressive facilities? [Full Article]

Enviromentalists and People of Faith: Partners in Conservation

Religions can boost environmentalism, according to a new World Watch Institute study released in December 2002. Partnerships between religious groups and environmentalists have been effective in promoting energy conservation, care for creation, and community building. According to author Gary Gardner, director of research at Worldwatch, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental think tank, people of faith and environmentalists share important interest. "Each looks at the world from a moral perspective; each views nature as having a value that surpasses economics; and each opposes excessive consumption," the report states.

One of the most innovative partnerships between advocates of religious and environmental concerns is California's Regeneration Project, an initiative of the Episcopal Church. Episcopal Power & Light was established in 1996 when the Rev. Sally Bingham realized that she might capitalize on the state's deregulation of energy to persuade the state's Episcopalians to choose energy generated from renewable sources such as wind, geothermal, solar, and biomass. "Currently, the Regeneration Project has spread to seven states and it could have a substantial effect on energy consumption patterns if adopted by religious groups and adherents nationwide," Gardner wrote. "In addition to offering a shot in the arm for emerging renewable energy companies, the project could help boost energy conservation." [Full Article]

Manufacturing Consent:

The Political Economy of the Mass Media

After reading this book, it would foolish to say that the corporate media does not consistently and systematically lie to Americans. Published in 1982 with a recent update, "Manufacturing Consent" exposes the mass media's complete subservience, obedience, and defense of government positions and statements, regardless of their validity. Herman and Chomsky show how the institutional structure of the corporate media filters out information that may allow the reader to develop a critical understanding of the world. In actuality, the perspective given of the world is the one that the government wants Americans to see, so they can continue to dominate the world with unquestioning support from the population, much like in a totalitarian state.

Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky propose "A Propaganda Model," which the media filters news through with virtually no exceptions. The propaganda model has five elements which filter information. The five elements are explained in detail and follow these lines: (1) the concentrated ownership of the media by a few corporations, (2) advertising as the prime source of income, (3) over-reliance of the corporate media on information from the government and business (4) "flak," or a disciplining of the media from the government, and (5) "anti-communism" categorizing victims of state violence into worthy and unworthy. [Full Article]

William Blum's Rogue State

"Throughout the world, on any given day, a man, woman or child is likely to be displaced, tortured, killed, or disappeared, at the hands of governments or armed political groups. More often than not, the United States shares the blame." This statement from Amnesty International may be one of the most concise ways to describe the horrors around the world that have come to be known as "U.S. foreign policy."

While Americans are presented with a radically different picture in the media than that of Amnesty International, this really should not be all that surprising in a country where the corporate media and government have made an art out of lying to the American public, spending millions of dollars to conceal the reality of the American empire.

Beneath all the lies and propaganda of the U.S. government and media though, if one is willing to spend the time necessary to investigate alternative views, one may find a world that is as foreign as the lunar surface. William Blum has conducted such an investigation of U.S. foreign policy in his book: Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower. What he found will shock many, and all but reaffirm what so many dissident Americans have known for so long: that the American empire has been responsible for the perversion of democracy, the widespread violation of human rights, and mass murder and genocide, all in the name of attaining wealth, power, and worldwide domination. [Full Article]

INDY BOOKS

Greg Shaw's Top 10 list of Books College Students Should Read

Isaiah Berlin, The Crooked Timber Of Humanity (Princeton University Press 1990; orig. 1959).
In his superbly eloquent prose, Berlin captured the essence of pluralism. Observing that people differ not only in their means or methods of going about their life work but also in their ends, he provided some important guideposts for how we can live with each other despite our thoroughgoing differences.
Karl Popper, The Open Society And Its Enemies (Harper & Row 1966)
Popper offered a modern restatement of what a liberal society should be all about. One of his more famous students was the international financier and philanthropist George Sorros.
Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse And Revival of American Community (Simon and Schuster 2000)
Putnam's book will stand as the definitive documentary of the decline of social capital in the United States during the latter half of the 20th century. He expertly presents a compelling case as to why Americans trust each other less now than before and what we might be able to do about it.
Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs And Steel: The Fates Of Human Societies (W.W. Norton 1997)
An evolutionary biologist by trade, Diamond presents a fascinating and sweeping (if somewhat controversial) account of why some civilizations have grown rich while others have not. Compelling reading for natural as well as social scientists. William Bowen and Derek Bok, The Shape Of The River: Long-Term Consequences Of Considering Race In College And University Admissions (Princeton University Press 1998)
This is the most definitive empirical account of the accomplishments of affirmative action programs in university admissions from the 1970s through the 1990s. You cannot participate intelligently in a conversation about affirmative action in university admissions without first reading this book.
Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Harvard University Press 1977)
Dworkin makes the case that in a liberal society that cares about distributive justice, individual rights must mark the beginning and end of all conversations.
Alan Brinkley, Liberalism And Its Discontents (Harvard University Press 1998)
[More Books]