A USA TODAY investigation shows that the University of Nevada continually placed women's sports teams at a disadvantage compared to its men's programs in violation of Title IX, even as the NCAA was monitoring the situation in Reno.
According to its report published this morning, USA TODAY interviewed more than two dozen current and former Nevada athletes and employees and reviewed thousands of pages of emails, equity reviews, facility plans, financial reports, fundraising records and other documents obtained via public records requests.
"Multiple internal assessments since 2018 pinpoint disparities that put ... virtually every Nevada women’s team at a disadvantage in a wide range of areas, including facilities, recruiting, meals, travel, equipment, publicity and access to medical treatment," wrote Kenny Jacoby.
According to Jacoby, the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights launched an investigation into Nevada athletics in 2019 for allegedly violating Title IX. "Even with outside eyes on them, the school’s top officials, including the president, did little to address the problems.," he wrote.
When university leaders send a message that women don’t matter, women come to accept and expect unfair treatment, said Elizabeth Taylor, a Temple University professor who studies diversity and inclusion in the sport industry.
“It forces women to wonder why they would continue to report or try to fight in a system where they’re not supported,” Taylor told USA TODAY. “So they just continue to operate in these spaces where they are mistreated.”
As reported by Jacoby, "Recently, under a new president and athletic director, Nevada has started closing the athletic gaps. But former school leaders allowed the problems to fester for so long – while funneling money toward luxuries for men’s teams – that full solutions are now tens of millions of dollars out of reach. "
Jacoby points to softball, in which players are housed in a converted shipping container that lacks running water and a dugout with toilets that don't flush, even as they are expected to maintain their playing field. And though it doesn't have a corresponding men's program, women's track and field trains on a track unsuitable to host meets, because a substantial portion of it is covered by seating erected to bolster football attendance.
"Locker rooms were another glaring problem," Jacoby wrote. "While 85 percent of male athletes had access to an exclusive locker room, only 17 percent of athletes on women’s teams did, a 2020 assessment by the school’s Title IX coordinator found.
"The women’s swimming and diving team’s locker room was open to the public — used by patrons of the school’s public pool.
"The soccer, track and field, and cross country teams shared one locker room, which doubled as the locker room for visiting football teams. Forced to vacate it on football game days to make room for the visiting team’s men, the women sometimes returned to find their equipment damaged or stolen, according to a 2018 Title IX compliance review."
When it came to basketball team travel, Nevada exhibited the greatest gender disparity of any team in the Mountain West Conference from 2013-14 through 2021-22, according to NCAA financial reports cited by USA TODAY. Food allowances for all women lagged behind those of their male counterparts, as well.
On Oct. 30, 2019, UNR president Marc Johnson received a letter from the OCR, that the federal agency that enforces Title IX had received a complaint against the Nevada athletic department.
“The complainant alleged that the university discriminates, based on sex, against female student athletes,” it said, by failing to provide men’s and women’s teams comparable facilities and recruiting resources. “OCR will proceed with the investigation of these allegations because the allegations raise a possible violation of Title IX.”
A year earlier, an outside law firm hired by the school to assess the athletic department’s Title IX compliance found several “areas of concern,” including with practice and competition facilities, locker rooms and nutrition, Jacoby reported.
"The university had done little to address the issues, however. It commissioned some designs for facility upgrades and installed the shipping container at the softball field as a makeshift locker room.," Jacoby wrote. "Faced with the potential of a full-blown federal investigation, the university opted to go another route. Before submitting any of the documents the Office for Civil Rights investigator requested, the university asked to voluntarily resolve the case – the administrative equivalent of a settlement. The federal agency agreed."
Per Jacoby's reporting:
The agreement, signed in December 2019, required UNR to first conduct an internal assessment. The university’s then-Title IX coordinator, Maria Doucettperry, submitted a 26-page report in April 2020 that acknowledged significant gender gaps in facilities and recruiting.
If the agency approved the assessment, the next step would have been for the university to develop and execute an action plan, with progress reports every six months.
Education Department spokesperson Vanessa Harmoush declined to discuss what happened next with USA TODAY, saying the agency does not talk about cases that are under monitoring.
But according to UNR spokesperson Scott Walquist, the university never heard back from the Office for Civil Rights, so it never developed or submitted its plan.
“Although OCR never accepted or responded to the review, the University has addressed a number of items within the report,” Walquist said. Among the upgrades around that time, the school added electricity and a new scoreboard to the softball field.
After USA TODAY contacted the Education Department for comment, the Office for Civil Rights on April 17 sent UNR its first correspondence in four years, saying it was “currently preparing a response” to the school’s 2020 assessment.
Brian Sandoval, Nevada's former two-term Republican governor, took over as university president in October 2020 and was briefed in his first weeks on campus about the athletic department’s gender inequity problems, he told USA TODAY. “Without exception,” he said, “every women’s sport needed help.”
According to Jacoby, "Today, most female athletes have a quality locker room. Softball players aren’t among them. While they continue to await a long-promised clubhouse, indoor practice facilities and lights — at an $11 million price tag, according to a 2022 estimate — they were given a second shipping container.
In a statement to USA Today, Sandoval said, “The strides made over the past three and a half years in upgrading facilities for women’s athletics and bolstering the Office of Equal Opportunity and Title IX underscore our commitment to structural and organizational improvements, aligning with the evolving needs and expectations of our University community."
