Ellen J. Staurowsky, Senior Writer, SLA & Professor, Sport Management, Drexel University, ejs95@drexel.edu
The Issues
Did administrators at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) falsify athletic participation numbers to avoid Title IX scrutiny in their annual Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act report for the 2016-2017 academic year or were the participation opportunity numbers as reported a clerical error?[6] Is this a case of a school inflating its participation numbers for women’s sports in an effort to subvert gender equity goals and knowingly reporting false information to the federal government or simply a mistake?
News Report From The Palm Beach Post & Additional Analysis of Participation Opportunities
The Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act calls upon colleges and universities offering intercollegiate athletics programs that also receive federal funding under Title VII to provide information to the public regarding resource allocations through an annual report filed with the United States Department of Education Office for Civil Rights by October 15 each year.Officially known as The Report on Athletic Program Participation Rates and Financial Support Data but more commonly referred to as the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act (EADA) Report, its purpose is to allow for public scrutiny of resource allocations in college and university athletic programs to assess the commitment institutions have made to the gender equitable treatment of female and male athletes (U.S. Department of Education Office of Postsecondary Education, 2017).
In keeping with the intention of the EADA, Kenny Jacoby, a reporter with The Palm Beach Post, reviewed the FAU EADA Report for the 2016-2017 academic year that raised several questions.Comparing data for 2015-2016 with that reported for 2016-2017, the percentage of female athletes in the FAU program rose by 20 percentage points.As reflected in Table 1. below, based on FAU’s EADA reports for those years, there was an increase in the overall number of female athletes and a decrease in the number of male athletes between those two years.
Table 1.Florida Atlantic University (FAU) EADA Report — Total Number of Male & Female Athletes[7]
Reporting Year
# of Male Athletes
# of Female Athletes
Total # of Athletes
% of Female Athletes
2015-2016
296
132
428
30%
2016-2017
245
253
498
51%
Difference
-51
+121
+70
+21%
When data provided for participation opportunities was compared by sport, there were fluctuations across teams as evidenced in Table 2.
Table 2.Florida Atlantic University (FAU) EADA Report — Total Participation Opportunities (PO)
Male Participation Opportunities
Female Participation Opportunities
2015-2016
2016-2017
Difference
2015-2016
2016-2017
Difference
Baseball
41
35
-6
15
15
0
Basketball
16
15
-1
Beach VB
20
16
-4
All Track
98
222
+124
Football
136
115
-21
Golf
12
8
-4
14
12
-2
Soccer
36
24
-8
36
29
-7
Softball
26
21
-5
Swim/Dive
29
26
-3
34
30
-4
T&F/XCtry
14
10
-4
12
13
+1
Volleyball
18
16
-2
Total
296
245
-41
266
377
+111
Based on the reported swings in the participation opportunities available to male and female athletes, the picture for FAU’s commitment to gender equity and potential for compliance with Title IX’s standard of proportionality in the area of athletic participation would have been much improved from one year to the next.As demonstrated in Table 3., if the figures as reported were accurate, FAU would have realized a shift of more than 13 points, moving from a circumstance where female athletes had access to 8.4% fewer athletic opportunities in 2015-2016 than their representation in the student body and having in excess of athletic opportunities proportional to enrollment a year later.As evidenced in the sport by sport analysis, the expansion in opportunities was reported as occurring primarily in the sport of “all track combined” for female athletes with an attendant reduction in men’s sports across the board.
Table 3.Florida Atlantic University (FAU) EADA Report:
Participation Opportunities Relative to Enrollment
2015-2016
2016-2017
% Female Enrollment
55.7%
55.6%
% Female Participation Opportunities
47.3%
60.6%
Gap
-8.4%
+5.0%
Jacoby (2018), however, questioned the veracity of the numbers as reported, noting that the number of participants in all women’s track and field combined (cross country, indoor track and field, outdoor track and field) would have doubled that program in the span of just one year.He also pointed out that the roster for the team as posted on the FAU website listed no more than 43 female athletes while the team photo included only 38 female athletes.
Florida Atlantic’s Response
Although Jacoby did report that a spokeswoman for the athletic department had indicated that the report as cited in the article included errors and that the University was working with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the Department of Education to correct, a statement following the release of the article prompted the characterization of The Palm Beach Post’s reporting as “inaccurate and misleading” (Metcalf, 2018).While FAU did not release a new report at the time of its statement on May 18, 2018, they claim that revisions to the EADA report for 2016-2017 revealed that “…female-athletes received a balanced 49.0 percent of FAU’s athletic participation opportunities” that was “…consistent with FAU’s upward trend in female athletic participation”.
FAU alleged that the errors in the EADA were committed by a former employee and no further explanation was offered as to the source of the mistakes.FAU has taken the position that they were first aware of the errors after they received an inquiry from Mr. Jacoby and “FAU offered to provide the updated data expeditiously to the reporter, but the reporter intentionally ran the story based on knowingly inaccurate data, rather than waiting for the updated report” (Metcalf, 2018).
The statement as issued by FAU, however, does raise further questions that may be resolved once a revised report is released.For example, in the publicly available EADA report, female athletes received r 36.3% of the athletically related financial aid (in other words, athletic scholarships) in 2016-2017.According to FAU’s statement regarding the accuracy of The Post’s story, they now assert that 45% of athletic scholarship dollars were allocated to female athletes in 2016-2017, an increase of 10% from the previous reporting year.In order to fully understand what this means, the revised report along with a full explanation of how these errors occurred would best serve those attempting to understand if FAU is offering gender equitable opportunities within its athletics program.
Conclusion
While FAU took umbrage at The Post’s decision to explain to the public the information found in the EADA report, Jacoby and the editorial staff at The Post were not irresponsible in sharing the irregularities of this report with the public.How else would the public have come to know that there was something wrong with the report?As of this writing, the erroneous EADA report remains posted to the U.S. Department of Education website.
Data gathered from EADA reports are used for a number of different purposes in support of the public interest.For individuals who may have referenced the report in hopes of assessing FAU’s commitment to gender equity, they would have had a far more favorable view of the program than is warranted.In the absence of knowing to consult previous years reports, or looking at trends over time, those individuals may now be wholly uninformed of what FAU’s record actually is.For researchers who use this data in support of research, the implications are significant. How does this kind of error get reported to them?Or will they ever know that this data set distorted the reality of what is happening in the FAU program?
What does this do to the accountability sought by the EADA? When considered in context of what is known about the approach some athletic departments take to EADA reporting, it is well known that some officials willingly inflate participation opportunities for female athletes, suppress participation opportunities for male athletes, and engage in other forms of inaccurate reporting.In 2017, Christine Willemsen, a reporter with the Seattle Times, found that the University of Washington claimed a higher number of women rowers than were on the team, counting female students who had never tried out for the team before.New York Times reporter, Katie Thomas (2011) also documented stories of athletic departments engaging in creative accounting in order to present more favorable gender equity profiles in the EADA.Court cases, most recently
And what of the question raised by The Post’s editorial staff.They wrote, “How did this former employee manage to file a report to a federal agency that completely obliterated the athletic department’s female participation gap without the ‘reporting official’, Brian Battle, or any other higher-level supervisor taking notice?”This remains an open question at this time.
And what kind of penalty, if any, might a school like FAU suffer as a result of this kind of error?Will the Office for Civil Rights conduct a full Title IX audit of the FAU athletic department and how does the OCR test the veracity of the new information shared by FAU?What can other schools expect if they too are found to have submitted faulty or flawed information in their EADA reports?
References
Battle, B.(Reporting Official).(2017).Florida Atlantic University Equity in Athletics Report.Equity in Athletics Data Analysis Cutting Tool.Retrieved from https://ope.ed.gov/athletics/#/
de Leon, R.(2016, May 26).How to investigation if your school is inflating gender equity numbers.Reveal:The Center for Investigative Reporting.Retrieved from https://www.revealnews.org/article/how-to-investigate-if-your-school-is-inflating-gender-equity-numbers/
Editorial Board.(2018, May 23).Editorial:FAU must do better job explaining false Title IX numbers.The Palm Beach Post.Retrieved from https://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/news/opinion/editorial-fau-must-better-job-explaining-false-title-numbers/8PJbuR184N4fMvBkpyX0BK/
Jacoby, K.(2018, May 18).Gender equality?FAU gave feds false numbers, ranked near bottom.The Palm Beach Post.Retrieved from https://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/news/gender-equality-fau-gave-feds-false-numbers-ranked-near-bottom/r1HcYrXaoDkiq5DbW8woOI/
Metcalf, L.(2018, May 18).FAU statement regarding inaccurate Palm Beach Post story.Press release.Retrieved from https://www.fau.edu/newsdesk/articles/fau-statement-regarding-inaccurate-palm-beach-post-story.php
Thomas, K.(2011, April 25).College teams, relying on deception, undermine gender equity.New York Times.Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/26/sports/26titleix.html
U.S. Department of Education Office of Postsecondary Education.(2017).User’s guide for the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act web-based data collection.Washington, DC:U.S. Department of Education.Retrieved from https://surveys.ope.ed.gov/athletics/images/Instructions/2017_EADA_user_s_Guide.pdf
Willmsen, C.(2017, March 5).UW women’s rowing-teams numbers inflated, avoiding Title IX scrutiny.Seattle Times.Retrieved from https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/uw-womens-rowing-team-numbers-inflated-avoiding-title-ix-scrutiny/
[6] Information shared in an EADA report offers some insight into gender equitable practices within an athletic department.By itself, however, an EADA report is not a Title IX audit.As a result, questions can be raised by an EADA report but Title IX compliance conclusions require further information gathering and analysis.
[7] The EADA provides for two types of metrics to measure participation.One is participation opportunities; the other an “unduplicated” count of athletes.The number of participation opportunities may exceed the number of unduplicated athletes because there may be athletes in a program who compete on more than one team.
