Rutgers Fencing will be gone in a year.

[epeemike81]

No they just find a new women's only sport to replace it.

and the advantage to the university of cutting an established women's program and going through the work of establishing a different women's program would be???

-m

[campb1pr]

I find this very unlikely. opting out of a women's only varsity sport would cause title IX issues. I think WF at JMU is safe from cuts due to the lack of a varsity men's equivalent.

-m

Unfortunately JMU is an anomoly, in that it could cut the women's fencing program and still be in compliance with at least one of the Title IX prongs.

Fencing has such a relatively small roster count vs. other sports at most schools that cutting either the men or the women or both is often possible, unless the school is not in compliance with any of the three prongs of the Title IX test. (Proportionality, continued history of program expansion, or accomodation of women's interests and abilities)

Arguing against cutting of a fencing program at most schools based on Title IX is difficult. There is much out there on the topic, and I would suggest perusing http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list...anceFinal.html for some truly interesting reading if you want to know about Title IX and how it is implemented. Then read http://www.nwlc.org/display.cfm?section=athletics for another source.

[campb1pr]

No you wouldn't. They occasionally show a bout or two from NCAA championships, but that's it. If they don't show NCAA Nationals on tv, what makes you think they'd show a conference tourney?

-m

I didn't mean a ton of it, but as KD5MDK said, at least once in a while. It'd probably beat the coverage of the Olympics from NBC, even!

[RoninX]

No you wouldn't. They occasionally show a bout or two from NCAA championships, but that's it. If they don't show NCAA Nationals on tv, what makes you think they'd show a conference tourney?

-m

**moved to the fencing on TV thread**

[prototoast]

ESPN 2 shows bodybuilding and world synchonized swimming competitions... you're gonna tell me that those actually draw more ratings than NCAA chamionship fencing would? You think the average viewer has any easier time distinguishing why a certain bodybuilder won or lost than they would a foil bout? What about synchonized swimming? Also just a bizarre sport to try and watch - while you can appreciate the effort the number of people who compete in it or practice it has got to be fewer than the number who compete/practice fencing!

Synchronized swimming is a very visually appealing sport. Bodybuilding has elements that can be appreciated by someone without any actual knowledge of how things are scored (even if it's just for the "freak" factor). Fact is, I don't think fencing does make for particularly good television. Sure, I'd watch it. Many people will watch anything if they invest themselves in it (getting the initial investment is difficult). But fencing has many problems with generating appeal. The same problem we have as fencers will also hurt the spectator appeal. You fence for a brief period of time, and then wait for a long time. Makes it hard for an audience to become really engaged with a particular competitor. I'm a fencer, but if fencing got regular tv coverage, and fencing was on at the same time as a Red Sox game, I'd watch the Red Sox game.

I guess that was a bit jumbled. Basically, I see a lot of arguments for why it would be good for fencing to be on TV, and other arguments for why fencing isn't any worse than things already on tv, but I haven't really seen any good arguments for why fencing would actually make for good tv. We know what television would bring to fencing, but what would fencing bring to television?

[sabreman]

and the advantage to the university of cutting an established women's program and going through the work of establishing a different women's program would be???

-m

They could always start a Competitive Cheer team like they did at UMD.

[seak]

mutters mutters mutters, dont even get me started! what a joke mutters

though it is mainly the fault of the women's ice hockey team : ). What it came down to was MD wanted to add scholarships to already existing men's sports (varsity teams that previously had no scholarships) to remain in compliance they decided to add two womens varsity teams with full scholarships.

Every year all club teams at MD can apply for varsity status women's ice hockey and water polo had applied every year for several years, ice hockey decided not to apply that year hence cheerleading and water polo were the only two teams that applied and they were both selected

Note fencing did not apply - and teams were not told ahead of time that they would be adding teams that year

[chefencer]

Coach frustrated in losing program

Title IX main cause for cuts Five of six programs eliminated needed to come from men's side

[seak]

Ok honestly, Title 9 isn't why men's programs are being cut as opposed to women's, the real issue is football. Title 9 merely states that you have to spend the same amount on women as you do on men or it has to be proportional to your student body, or meet students interests.

I do not think it is a bad thing that university atheltic departments have to pay as much attention to women's sports as men's sports. That is merely promoting equality.

The issue is that football takes up over 60 scholarships, that means you have to have 4 women's teams to balance out the men's football team and hence have more women's sports then men's, so smaller men's sports end up getting left out, becuase there money is going to football.

[SJCFU#2]

While Title IX is frequently blamed, in this case it is moot (at least as far as fencing is concerned).

Both men's and women's fencing teams are being cut.

[seak]

No it isn't. It's forcing equality, regardless of whether or not equality is appropriate in a certain situation.

As fencers, we've seen time and time again that to get to equality, schools do not provide more opportunities for women, they remove opportunities for men. No one wins from that.

Athletic Departments have a finite amount of money, if they have only 50 million dollars to spend and before title 9 40 million of it was spent on men, that means that 15 million dollars now needs to be shifted. This is becuase men were getting more then their equal share, and so now men's programs need to be cut in order to add women's programs so that their is equality where there wasn't before.

The only way to not cut the men's teams would be to have a larger budget often this isn't doable, hence why men's teams get cut in order to add opportunities for women.

However, do you believe that women should not recieve relativly equal funding (note most universities in this country are not spliting their athletic money 50/50)? The reason you see 4 mens teams being cut to one women's teams is becuase football skews the numbers since you have so many men participating in one sport, you need more women's sports to balance it out.

[DJ Apostrophe]

Athletic Departments have a finite amount of money, if they have only 50 million dollars to spend and before title 9 40 million of it was spent on men, that means that 15 million dollars now needs to be shifted. This is becuase men were getting more then their equal share, and so now men's programs need to be cut in order to add women's programs so that their is equality where there wasn't before.

The only way to not cut the men's teams would be to have a larger budget often this isn't doable, hence why men's teams get cut in order to add opportunities for women.

However, do you believe that women should not recieve relativly equal funding (note most universities in this country are not spliting their athletic money 50/50)? The reason you see 4 mens teams being cut to one women's teams is becuase football skews the numbers since you have so many men participating in one sport, you need more women's sports to balance it out.

Right, but what Mr. Biggs was saying, was that if you have a situation where a school was saying (for the sake of argument) $20 million on men's sports, and $10 million on women's sports, what seems to happen is they slash the men's sports to be $12 million and increase the women's sports to $12 million. Yes, they are now spending equal amounts, good for them! and they've increased the amount of money they are spending on women's sports, good for them!... however, to do that, they've made a net change in the athletics budget of -$6million dollars, because they couldn't afford to add women's opportunities up to match the men, and either couldn't, or had no desire to re-appropriate some money that was going to the men's sports.

-w

[Allen Evans]

I think it is important to be careful about the numbers you use. Title IX does not mandate a 50/50 budget split between men and women's sports. Men's Football programs, for example, are allowed to spend more money per athlete simply because it costs more to equip a football player than it does, say, a female diver.

Title IX does address such things as number and amount of scholarships, quality of facilities, practice times, and so forth.

Allen

[seak]

Yes but that is the school deciding to spend less money on athletics, since the money was being spent on men's teams, they are the ones that are going to get cut. Basically though those cuts aren't happening becuase of title 9, they are happening becuase the university is looking for an excuse to cut their budget down and Title 9 is an easy target.

This is in fact what happened to a couple of ACC fencing programs. A few universities (clemson to name one) were looking for a reason to cut their fencing team and Title 9 happened to be a handy fall guy, the programs though were cut becuase for various reasons the university was sick of the program (or coach) not becuase of Title 9.

[seak]

To piggyback on what Allen said (which is very true) there are also multiple ways to be Title 9 compliant, taking into account individual school circumstances. You do not have to spend the same amount on men and women even in terms of scholarships etc to be title 9 compliant.

[bigdawg2121]

Do you actually have any clue what you're talking about or are you just typing for your own amusement? Fencing teams are indeed usually small, they are not, however, all that expensive (especially when you consider the amount of money spent on other sports). It doesn't place much of an undue strain on a school to support the fencers that it has. Most teams have men's and women's programs so at the very least they stay even (and since they're small it's not like the effect on overall number of athletes is that big either). I'd also imagine that if you look you'll find that fencing often does better GPA wise than most other athletics teams (schools like teams that raise the overall athletics GPA and bring "fame/prestige" to the school). Title 9 rarely a reason to cut fencing. The posters above are likely correct in noting that many of the teams that got axed got axed for other reasons with title 9 serving as a convnient out. I could go on and even talk about my own team is more or less the antithesis of all your points but I won't...maybe you should consider other possibilities more carefully before you use all of your personal collegiate fencing team experience to explain things.

[KD5MDK]

especially since I haven't seen Title 9 help anyone anyway.

That's probably because you've never examined the status of women's sports prior to its existance.

[mrbiggs]

Okay, fine. I conceed completely.

I guess I've spent too much time talking about this with fencers.

I'm deleting all my previous posts because there's no longer an argument, and further discussion is just going to detract from the actual topic of this thread. I'm therefore ignoring other responses to them as well.

[AndrewH]

I could go on and even talk about my own team is more or less the antithesis of all your points but I won't...

Bro your team may not be small but it's gotta be expensive. You guys travel more than we do, bring more people when you do travel, you'd have to buy more equipment for the team because it's large, and don't you guys have a dedicated fencing room?

At RU we practice in the annex of the gym, we attend the minimum number of meets and have the minimum number of fencers on each squad. I think we might have the smallest fencing budget of any div I school... yet it's apparently still too much.

[keropie]

Yes, but we (UNC) don't buy equipment for team members, they buy their own. We travel by bus, and bus only (except when we go to Duke, then we use our own cars half the time). We repair everything we can, rather than buy new. Our total budget (not counting coaching staff salaries, which are separate) is less than most moderately successful people make in a year. Well, maybe a bit more than moderately successful.

Technically, I guess we do sorta supply some equipment. Each team member can buy up to two weapons per year from the team for $25 (clearly less than what they cost), and any weapons that break are replaced with no cost to the athlete. We have a smallish number of lames and saber masks that can be used for competition only. We do supply body cords, but we don't buy many any given year. But we really don't spend much at all, and that's for the combined men's and women's team.

What's happening at Rutgers sucks though. Pure and simple. Cutting the team really can't be enough of a savings to make that much impact, and it's terrible that fencing goes, while the super successful football takes no impact (as far as I'm aware). But when the state's got no money, the state's got no money, and like others have said, fencing doesn't make a dime. Very few people make donations to the school based on fencing (you guys may have a few, but not a lot), and the school is certainly willing to gamble that those people will still donate to the school.

I still hope somehow they'll change their mind. Even if Jesse does look like a hippie