Marshall Backtracks on Plan to Reduce Girls’s Swimming Program

After a gaggle of athletes sued, Marshall University is now not planning to finish its ladies’s swimming and diving program, the Associated Press and different retailers reported.

The scholar athletes had accused the college of violating Title IX, the gender-equity legislation that requires equal alternatives to take part in instructional actions. University officers have said the choice to get rid of the sports activities stemmed from “managing the financial realities of intercollegiate athletics and addressing the infrastructure investments required to sustain Division I swimming facilities.” Marshall additionally deliberate so as to add Stunt, a comparatively new ladies’s sport.

Marshall president Brad Smith said in a news release that the college modified its plans for swimming and diving after “external Title IX consultation indicated that eliminating a women’s program could potentially place the university outside the safe harbor framework of Title IX, even when the long-term result would be an increase in participation opportunities for women.”

“Leadership is about making difficult decisions and trade-offs, and sometimes those decisions are unpopular,” Smith stated at a information convention. “But leadership is also about having humility to listen, to learn and to adjust course if new facts and information emerge. And that’s what we have done here.”