Blog: Equity In Scheduling Means Just That

Folks in western Michigan are stewing. High school athletes, coaches and spectators are expressing their displeasure with the scheduling of boys' and girls' basketball games - the boys first, the girls second. Everyone's blaming the Michigan Women's Commission, which operates under the state Department of Civil Rights, for ruining the sports experience of the girls that the group purported to be supporting with its complaint against the Lansing-based Michigan High School Athletic Association and Lansing-area schools.

At issue in that complaint was the longtime tradition of boys' games occurring in the "marquee" Friday-evening time slot, with the lesser squad (the boys' junior varsity) contesting the early matchup. With girls' teams replacing the boys' JV as the opening act, they typically played before sparse crowds until after halftime, when fans arriving early for the boys' varsity games began filling the stands. The MWC's complaint was settled in 2009 before it could be adjudicated, so various athletic conferences have, in fairness and with an eye toward possible litigation, reversed the order of games. The result? Boys' early games continue to pack the house, while the mass exodus of fans during the girls' game is a "fiasco," "a slap in the face" and "humiliating" to the female athletes, according to various observers quoted in a January Grand Rapids Press article that has since been picked up by every news outlet and blogger with an ax to grind against gender-equity activists in particular and so-called "politically correct liberals" in general.

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