The continuing lack of women’s equity in intercollegiate sports and the fact that Title IX is not working the way it was designed to were discussed Thursday by a leading authority on Title IX.

Christine Grant, who served as the Women’s Athletic Director at the University of Iowa for 27 years, presented statistics supporting the fact that Title IX is not working the way it should during her speech in the Sun Room of the Memorial Union to a crowd of about 40.

“We don’t think it is a lack of interest [in sports], we think it is a lack of opportunity,” said Grant, a founding member of the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women and a leading authority and crusader of Title IX. Title IX is a federal law of the Education Amendment of 1972 that prohibits sex discrimination in education.

“You give little girls a good coach and half-decent facilities and they’ll come running to play sports,” she said.

Grant said President Bush established a commission last June to review Title IX because of the belief that the law has been causing men to lose opportunities and has created financial crises for schools. She said the commission’s report is one-sided and does not support the reality of students and sports.

“Their study is based on fallacy,” she said.

Grant projected National Collegiate Athletic Association figures from an overhead supporting that as women’s sports have received more benefits, men’s sports have also continuously been granted more benefits.

She said much of the financial burden taken on by schools is not because of Title IX and its effect on athletics, but rather to the competition between schools to stay equal on a material level.

“If another institution builds an indoor football facility, we’ve got to build one,” she said. “It is done in name of keeping up with the Joneses.”

Jim Richardson, graduate student in professional agriculture and resident of Webster City, said Grant’s speech was informative. “It’s a chance to hear the side of the story that you are not going to hear in the media,” he said.

The information presented in the speech “evoked high levels of emotion and nausea” for Penny Rice, director of the Women’s Center for the Sloss House.

“The true statistics frustrate me and really make me sick,” she said. “We all can succeed if it is done equitably.”

The crowd of about 40 people who attended was much less than the crowd that turned up last fall when Grant was originally scheduled to appear, said Anne Kinzel, an Iowa State University alumna.

“I would have loved to have seen more,” she said. “I am sure everyone that was here learned a lot.”