Quinnipiac University’s Title IX plan keeps cheerleading, volleyball, adds women’s rugby

Quinnipiac adds women’s rugby under Title IX plan

HARTFORD, Conn. — Quinnipiac University plans to keep its women’s volleyball team and its competitive cheer squad as it follows a court order to bring its athletics programs into compliance with federal gender-equity requirements.

Under a plan filed in federal court on Wednesday, the university also proposes adding women’s golf and rugby teams to provide more athletic opportunities for female students.

“Quinnipiac University plans to increase its investment in women’s athletics in the years ahead,” the school’s vice president for public affairs, Lynn Bushnell, said in a prepared statement.

Several volleyball players and their coach sued Quinnipiac last year after the school announced it would eliminate volleyball for budgetary reasons and replace it with a competitive cheer squad.

The school contended the cheer squad and other moves kept it in compliance with Title IX, the 1972 federal law that mandates equal opportunities for men and women in athletics.

But U.S. District Judge Stefan Underhill in a ruling last month disagreed, saying competitive cheerleading had not developed enough to be considered a college sport for Title IX purposes. He ordered the school to keep the volleyball team and come up with a compliance plan.

During the trial, school officials hinted they might be forced to drop competitive cheerleading if it was not found to be a sport.

Instead, the school plans to rename the squad the stunts and tumbling team and keep it as a varsity sport. The school said it would revise its compliance plan should stunts and tumbling be recognized by college sports’ governing body, the NCAA, as an emerging sport before the 2011-12 school year.

Its compliance proposal calls for keeping the volleyball team through the 2011-12 school year and for adding a rugby team that would have 35 members and a golf team that would have 10. Golf would begin play in the upcoming academic year, and rugby would start in 2011-12, the school said.

“Both of these are already recognized NCAA varsity sports, golf being a championship sport and rugby an emerging sport,” Bushnell said.

The school also plans to have its senior vice president for academic and student affairs, Mark Thompson, monitor the rosters of its teams.

The judge found that Quinnipiac had been manipulating rosters to make it appear that women had more athletic opportunities than were available.

David McGuire, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut, which represented the volleyball players, said they were reviewing the proposal and would have a response for the judge, who must approve it.

“The issue is whether the compliance plan provides sufficient genuine varsity participation opportunities for Quinnipiac University’s female students,” McGuire said. “With that question in mind, we will evaluate the proposal and discuss it with our clients.”