Office of Civil Rights issues new guidelines to include students with disabilities in sports

The U.S. Department of Education declared today that schools must provide students with disabilities a fair opportunity to participate in athletic activities. 

Although the Department of Education does not foresee immediate dramatic changes, the new guidelines should probe schools to make adjustments and open doors for the students who have been—despite the previously existing ant-discrimination laws—precluded from participation.   

The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504) already prohibits the exclusion of persons with disability from programs and activities at federally funded institutions. But the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) took a step further today and provided specific examples on how institutions should ensure that they accommodate students with disabilities.

The OCR stated that the letter does not “add requirements to applicable law, but provides information and examples to inform recipients [school officials] about how OCR evaluates whether covered entities are complying with their legal obligations” (See full letter here.)

Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education, wrote on his blog that students with disabilities are often excluded from sports based on incorrect judgments, generalizations and stereotypes. “This is simply wrong,” Duncan wrote.

The letter requires school officials to make “reasonable modifications” to ensure that students with disabilities have equal opportunity to participate in sports.

According to Gregg Toppo’s article for USA Today, the letter was long overdue—particularly because a report from 2010 indicated that students with disabilities participated in athletics at substantially lower rates than students without disabilities. The clarification on how to enforce positive change was, thus, in order.

Some activist compared the enforcement initiatives to Title IX, an education amendment that prohibits discrimination based on sex. Title IX is credited with the tremendous increase of athletic opportunities for women and a cultural shift about women’s place in sports.

“This is a landmark moment for students with disabilities. This will do for students with disabilities what Title IX did for women. This is a huge victory,” Terri Lakowski, who has been heavily involved with coalition building and education around civil rights issues, told the Associated Press.

The Women’s Sports Foundation announced that this letter is actually a “direct result of Title IX.”

It might take some time to enforce the structural changes. But a legislative boost might eventually result in a more inclusive sporting environment and increased participation for the students who are relegated to the margins in our society.  

Perhaps increased opportunities will also eventually challenge the way we think about sport in our culture. Perhaps, such change will also encourage us to re-think the values we associate with sport—the values that contributed to the subjugation of many. 

-- Dunja Antunovic

NCAA cuts funding for Scholarly Colloquium

A few days ago, the NCAA announced that it would withdraw funding to the Scholarly Colloquium, which has been in existence for six years and "provided a space for (often critical) academic discourse at the association's annual convention," according to an article on Inside Higher Ed.

The NCAA officials said that the colloquium did not attract sufficient attendance and that the Journal of Intercollegiate Sport (JIS), also sponsored by the NCAA and affiliated with the colloquium, was not profitable.

Some scholars who attended the colloquiums and submitted research for the JIS said that the NCAA's main problem was not financial, but the fact that the NCAA was reluctant to hear criticism embedded in the scholarly articles and discussions. (Read more on scholars' responses in the article by the Chronicle of Higher Education here.)

It is unclear at this point if the JIS will be able to stay alive.

Dr. Scott Kretchmar, professor of Kinesiology, who also served as the founding president of the Scholarly Colloquium and the founding editor of the Journal of Intercollegiate Sport, expressed his disappointment with the NCAA's decision.

"How interesting that, at a time when most agree that all is not well in Division I athletics, the NCAA has taken steps to avoid thoughtful criticism," Kretchmar wrote in an article for the Curley Center for Sport Journalism's site.

The former NCAA Faculty Athletic Representative of Penn State, Kretchmar teaches classes in sport ethics, among others.

I concur with Kretchmar. It is, indeed, "interesting" timing by the NCAA. One might wonder what happened to the NCAA's commitment to academics. Even beyond that, whatever happened to reason?

Wouldn't you, the NCAA, as an organization, want the input of people who can provide empirical evidence that might actually help you solve at least some of the problems?

The timing is particularly interesting considering that a study recently published by the Delta Cost Project at American Institutes for Research pointed to the wide gap between spending on student-athletes and students.

Here is a paragraph from the study:

"Athletic departments spend far more per athlete than institutions spend to educate the average
student—typically three to six times as much; among Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) institutions,
median athletic spending was nearly $92,000 per athlete in 2010, while median academic spending
per full-time equivalent (FTE) student was less than $14,000 in these same universities" (p. 2).

This should raise some question. An NPR article provides some good evaluation for the study. It's worth a read.

Anyways, perhaps a continued conversation at the Scholarly Colloquium and in the Journal of Intercollegiate Sport would allow for a deeper investigation of how the NCAA can better negotiate the "academic" component in intercollegiate athletics, whether that means examining the psychological impact of sporting events on campus, economic sustainability, hiring issues related to race, gender, and/or sexual orientation,  and, broadly, academic reform. 

It is understandable that the NCAA looks to cut costs. But do the cuts really need to result in the exclusion of scholars who see intercollegiate athletics both on a micro-level through teaching the student-athletes and on a macro-level through their research that often asks questions that are different from the NCAA's primary concerns (feel free to fill in the blank here)?

Dear NCAA, please reconsider.
 
-- Dunja Antunovic

Serena Williams impersonation triggers stereotypical ideals about black women's bodies

Caroline Wozniacki, former No. 1 tennis player in the world,  decided to make fun of her friend, Serena Williams. Wozniacki stuffed towels into her top and skirt during an exhibition match in Sao Paulo, Brazil in attempt to illustrate Williams' bodily construction. It was supposed to be a well-meaning joke.

But the instance spurred a heated discussion in the U.S.-based media outlets. The question it raised was: Funny or racist?

Here is some context: Tennis players habitually poke fun at each other through imitation. I remember how much my friends and I imitated each other and other players at practice, making fun of our friends' shots, grunts, mannerisms. The pros do it too. Novak Djokovic became the joker of the circuit thanks to his famous impersonation of Maria Sharapova. Shortly thereafter, Andy Roddick took upon himself to make fun of Djokovic. It's all good. They are all friends.

But most of the imitations do not rely upon discriminatory cultural imagery about the bodies of one social group.

Wozniacki's imitation is problematic because it evokes  the image of Saartjie Baartman, the Hottentot Venus, whose body was hypersexualized and objected to the gaze of white Europeans. Baartman was displayed as an oddity, as a freak due to her supposedly disproportionate buttocks and breasts. The exoticization of black women lives on.

That, right there, is the problem of the way in which Wozniacki chose to make fun of Williams.


Anita Little, who wrote a blog post for Ms. Magazine highlighted the issue:

"Our [black women's] bodies are not caricatures. This incident did not happen in a societal vacuum where black women’s bodies haven’t been historically degraded as exotic objects."


But some prefer to see the incident in a vacuum and take the "get over it" approach: It's all just a joke between friends and, really, why can't we just laugh at ourselves and others?

Certainly, Wozniacki did not mean to be malicious, and --- not to make assumptions about her cultural awareness, but--- she probably had no idea how offensive her imitation might be.

"Many people don’t have the cultural awareness to be sensitive of the centuries-old portrayals of black women, so we continue to see bad gestures like this one," Anita Little added. "It’s easy to tell black people to just lighten up when you are never the butt of the joke."

Greg Couch from FoxSports acknowledged that the act evoked caricatures of black women, yet concluded said that proclaiming Wozniacki a "worldwide racist" is "just too much talk." Couch also recommended Wozniacki ask her friend, Williams to determine how racist her actions were.


Jemele Hill from ESPNW wants to "chuckle" at Wozniacki. Hill emphasized that Serena Williams saw her body as a source of empowerment, that surely Wozniacki knew that. And besides, "black women love their curves," Hill wrote.

Williams is certainly proud of her body, as she should be. In 2009, she appeared in the ESPN Body Issue; her cover sold the highest number of copies. Despite Williams' efforts to embrace "beauty inside and out," she has also been a target of discussion for her behavior, her clothing (see catsuit), and her hair.

(On a related note: My colleague, Steve Bien-Aimé recently wrote a post wondering why Olympic gold medalist Gabby Douglas got more attention for her hair than for her athletic accomplishments.)

Herein lies the other problem: In the United States, female athletes overall receive less coverage than male athletes. Black female athletes receive even less coverage than white female athletes. So it is that much more important to examine how the U.S. media engage in instances such as this one.

Precisely because of the lack of visibility of black female athletes, I was glad to see that the Huffington Post invited Swin Cash, a professional women's basketball player, to participate in an online conversation on the issue. The experts on this panel address the cultural and historical implications of such imagery. One panelist pointed out that critics are viewing Wozniacki's action through a U.S.-centric lens and emphasized that the imitation is likely to carry different cultural meanings based upon the context. The conversation is worth a look.

Wozniacki's imitation was plain insensitive. Evaluating her actions by saying "she didn't know" or "she just meant to be funny" reflects a total lack of awareness of the history behind such representations---a lack of awareness of the representations of black women's bodies.

It is important to have this conversation. The instance might take upon different cultural meanings in other countries, but in the U.S. it certainly triggered historically rooted racist ideas. And I'm glad that there is a conversation about this in U.S.-based media. If for no other reason, but to raise awareness of the portrayals that have for so long contributed to the subjugation of black women.

--- Dunja Antunovic

Radio hosts' rude comments about transgender athlete highlights need for more diversity training

The recent suspension of two hosts of an ESPN Radio affiliate for insensitive comments about a transgender basketball player highlights that the lexicon journalists have needs to be burnished.

It is unknown whether the radio hosts consider themselves journalists, and I will not castigate all sports journalists for the actions of two individuals. However, the column by ESPN’s Christina Kahrl prompted me to tackle this from a different angle.

This post is a request for broadening the diversity training journalists receive. Being a former journalist and a member of different minority advocacy journalism groups, I believe that diversity is often thought of in terms of gender, race and now sexual orientation. While the categories appear varied, the groups in these categories are far from static.

People do not easily fit into the labels society provides. The article USA Today’s Eric Prisbell wrote about Gabrielle Ludwig explains this well. I also freely acknowledge that if I were copy editing Prisbell’s article, I would feel extremely underqualified to edit it without reading additional literature on transgender individuals.

Journalists are not sheltered people. They interact with various members of society, especially in sports where a huge cross-section of society sits. That cross-section is only going to become more diverse in the years to come.

The news media cannot ignore a group of people or act as if they do not exist. If work to broaden diversity training to include transgender athletes is not done soon, journalists will quickly find themselves ill-equipped in an ever-growing sports landscape.

-- Steve Bien-Aimé

How do female athletes want to be portrayed?

More than 350 scholars gathered from all over the world for the annual meeting of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport (NASSS) in New Orleans, which concluded on Saturday. The conference offered valuable research for those concerned about the relationship between sports media and society. Steve Bien-Aime, my colleague from the The John Curley Center for Sports Journalism, extensively documented some of these discussions on this blog (see earlier posts here).

One main area of interest at NASSS is gender in mediated sport. While much research has been done on representation of female athletes, scholars have recognized the need to examine perceptions of female athletes about the ways in which they are portrayed in the media. Researchers from the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport took upon the task to explore how female athletes would prefer to be shown in the media. 

In the study titled "Exploring Elite Female Athletes' Interpretations of Sport Media Photographs: A Window into the Construction of Social Identity and 'Selling Sex' in Women's Sports,” Dr. Mary Jo Kane, Dr. Nicole LaVoi and Dr. Janet Fink (University of Massachusetts-Amherst) identified four ways in which female athletes typically appear in the media and asked female athletes to pick which representation they would prefer. The four representations were: 

     (1)    A woman in an action shot, participating in her sport (competency frame),

     (2)    A woman with some symbol of her sport (such as holding a ball in her hand), but outside of playing field (mixed message frame)

     (3)    A woman completely outside of her playing field with no indication of athletic participation (“sexy/classy lady” frame),

     (4)    A soft pornographic image of a nearly or completely naked woman

The researchers found through focus groups with Division I female athletes that most of them would prefer to be portrayed as the woman in the (1) frame – playing their sport. Some of them wanted to pick two representations as they identified with both the (1) frame and the (2) frame.

However, when the female athletes were asked which photo would bring most attention to their sport, one-third of them said that it would be the soft pornographic image. They picked this based upon the belief that hypersexualized images were more marketable to a male audience. 

Consistently with the Tucker Center’s previous research, Dr. Kane and her colleagues contested the “sex sells women’s sports” assumption, arguing that these hypersexualized, soft pornographic images are counter-productive as they do not foster respect for female athletes and women’s sports. 

According to the study presented at NASSS, female athletes prefer to see themselves portrayed in an athletically competent pose. Ultimately, Dr. Kane and her colleagues argued, only these types of portrayals will lead to change in cultural perceptions about women’s sports. 

For a summary of the “sex sells sex, not women’s sports” argument, see our earlier blog post. To see twitter updates from the conference, go to #NASSS12 @CurleyCenter. 

-- Dunja Antunovic

Studies challenge ideas of sport fandom

Two recent studies presented Friday at the annual conference for the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport in New Orleans challenged the concept of sport fandom.

Antunovic presents during the "Sport and Gender" panel.

Bloggers on women’s sports blogs appear to view fandom differently than common perceptions of fan behavior, said Dunja Antunovic, a researcher with The John Curley Center for Sports Journalism at Penn State. Bloggers on Women Talk Sports and BlogHer perceive sport often through a participatory perspective rather than an observatory lens, Antunovic said. In other words, instead of following teams many of the bloggers on these websites enjoy sport in terms of well-being and as a livelihood.

Antunovic and her research colleague Marie Hardin analyzed the bloggers’ profiles to gauge their views on sport and fandom. Many of the bloggers were not rabid fans of teams and did not focus on the more aggressive actions of fandom. They were more fans of the sports themselves and in terms of women’s sports, they worked on “bringing visibility” to them, Antunovic said.

Overall, the bloggers saw sport's purpose to be positive, inclusive and build relationships, she said.

But why do women need a separate space to discuss sports? Preliminary research by the University of Tennessee’s Traci Yates can perhaps help to answer this question.

Yates interviewed four women NFL fans to gauge their experiences as fans. A common theme among these women was the fact they had to verify their sports credentials, Yates said. Male sports fans often “tested” the women’s sports knowledge and acted as if they are the gatekeepers on determining genuine levels of fandom. One of Yates’ interview participants expressed embarrassment at this type of questioning and the overall challenge to her quality as a fan.

To that end, another one of Yates’ participants talked about how she had to change her language style to fit in when she watched sports among men. She never talked that way except in that sporting context among men, indicating that perhaps sports fandom is defined by aggressive men.

Both studies also more broadly discussed working to change the definition of fandom; that there should not be “fandom” and then a women’s style of fandom. Rather, the definition needs to encompass a wider segment of the population – one that likely includes the majority of male sports fans, who are people who like sports but are not the intense, face-painting, tribalistic individuals commonly portrayed as the typical sports fan.

-- Steve Bien-Aimé

Is the regulation of celebrations in sports part of a larger battle?

"Control of the body is a political issue."

San Jose State's Vernon Andrews made that statement during presentations on the "African-American Experience" Thursday at the annual conference for the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport in New Orleans.

Andrews’ statement was part of a broader discussion regarding his research on how black expression is regulated in sports.

Thursday he focused mainly on the discourse surrounding end-zone dances in football. Why are these dances considered undignified, uncouth or unbecoming of an athlete? Andrews argues that white elites dictate the rules for behavior in social spaces.

During his specific presentation, Andrews introduced statements from media members questioning the celebrations of expressive athletes, with some even criticizing the now famous Tiger Woods fist pump.

Andrews said that there should not be a blind following to the notion: This is the way it’s always been done. Rather, it should be asked: Who did it “that way” first, and why should everybody else adhere to that? Perhaps there is a cultural significance to the behaviors performed by the small percentage of athletes who are expressive, Andrews said.

He also said the power to make the rules for social spaces should not rest with the owners, but with the players and fans instead.

“It’s not the owners’ sport. … It’s all of our sport,” he said.

-- Steve Bien-Aimé

Analysis of Sports Illustrated yields interesting data on portrayals of women athletes

A new study indicates that representation of women athletes is improving, but there’s a caveat to that point.

The University of Buffalo’s Kiera Duckworth analyzed Sports Illustrated issues during Olympic years and found that the majority of articles portrayed women athletes as “strong, competent athletes.” Her research was presented Thursday at the annual conference for the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport in New Orleans.

This is a positive signal for women’s sports because it is imperative that women athletes are recognized for their athletic prowess and not being sexualized.

However in her analysis of advertisements in the same issues, Duckworth found that there were differences in representation based on race. White women were portrayed as “the girl next door”, black females were shown predominately in a sporting context and Asian women were sexualized.

Taken together, Duckworth’s research indicates that the focus needs to be placed not just on journalists, but on advertising companies who also create societal representations of women athletes.

-- Steve Bien-Aimé