Letter to the Editor

To solve district's Title IX issue, just think like a federal bureaucrat

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Dear editor:

I believe I have a solution for the Mountain Home School District's Title IX problem, as described in your Julv 27 editorial.

To summarize, the feds at the Seattle Civil Rights Office have decided that many Idaho schools, including Mountain Home, are not meeting their quotas for participation in sports by female athletes. They may dress this up with fancy government Bureaucrat Speak (aka "Gov't BS"), but we all know it is a quota program.

Mountain Home School District (MHSD) officials need to forget about applying logic to this problem, because Gov't BS does not run on logical principles. The feds' statement that the MHSD "does not provide opportunities for girls to play sports in numbers substantially proportionate to their enrollment" cannot be countered by the MHSD showing that the girls do, in fact, have equal opportunities to play sports, and that the problem is that girls apparently do not want to play sports in "proportionate numbers."

What the girls want is irrelevant to the feds; the girls must meet the unannounced quotas that the feds have in mind, even though the feds will never use the word "quota."

The solution to this problem is to think in terms of Gov't Bureaucrat Speak, not in terms of logic or facts. The MHSD merely needs to change some of the names of the programs where there is high female participation, as follows:

1) The feds have decreed that cheerleading and dance line are not "sports," no matter the requirement for athletic ability in those activities. However, the feds apparently like "gymnastics." Fine. Change the name of "cheerleading" to "free-form, extreme gymnastics," and change the name of "dance line" to "performance art gymnastics." POOF! You now have added two sports that meet the criteria of the Gov't BS quota.

If the Civil Rights Office complains that these activities do not meet the criteria of traditional gymnastics competition, accuse the feds of being small-minded, unsophisticated, ignorant, fascist haters of modern performance art, who lack all understanding of nuance. This "hey, it's a free-form style of gymnastics" principle could also be applied to other activities, such as aerobics.

2) Change the name of the debate team to "extreme mental gymnastics." When the feds argue about that, call them uneducated misogynist cretins who don't understand the necessity for modern girls to be able to assert themselves in the workplace.

If this activity re-labeling program does not achieve the feds quota requirements, it is time to bring out the big guns. As you said, the MHSD should not "go down the hallways and strong-arm the first girls they run into to take part in a sport." That wouldn't be right.

Instead, following the principles of Gov't BS, the MHSD must institute a "girls' sports draft." Any girl who does not voluntarily participate in a fed-approved sport will be subject to being required, as a condition of graduation, to be placed into a "sports quota draft pool." If their name is drawn, they must participate in a sport that meets quota requirements.

The girls and their parents will probably complain about being forced to participate in something that they don't like, and that may be painful and even humiliating for them. The MHSD can then tell them it is a federal requirement, and will therefore be good training for dealing with the Gov't BS in their adult lives -- such as an IRS audit.

When the girls and their parents start throwing rotten eggs at the school boards during board meetings, the boards can provide them with the names and addresses of the fed bureaucrats who are enforcing the Title IX quotas, plus a parchment-toned copy of Title IX, suitable for framing

I am sure that this modest proposal will solve the Title IX Fed quota requirements imposed on the Mountain Home School District. It will also provide a wonderful learning experience for the students, letting them experience first-hand what it is like dealing with Gov't BS.

Hey, don't thank me -- I'm just trying to help.

Pete Humm