Female kicker's chilling effect.

October 22, 2000 9:05 AM

Female kicker's chilling effect. "Instead, the $2 million Mercer was awarded has given them two million reasons to question the risk of giving any woman a chance, especially at smaller schools where female players would otherwise be most likely to succeed."
posted by owillis (5 comments total)

"This is going to cost me getting a scholarship," Butler said. "Now no coach is going to want me, because they're going to think if I don't do well on the team, I'll turn around and sue them."

Duh!?
The equality is important. The discrimination is unjust. I support both those notions. Being strongly active in issues that are important to you is another thing I completely understand and support. But I think these ramifications could have been seen on the horizon a while ago. If you are being treated unfairly, the thought of bringing the offense to justice sounds like the perfect refuge, but in this case, I don't see how giving a coach even more apprehensions in terms of taking someone seriously is necessarily going to make him more willing to go out of his way to accommodate you, lawful or not.

As outlined in the article, Duke lost their battle by initially giving the woman the opportunity to play. If, however, they had never given the authorization to let her play, they would not have been held responsible for discrimination. The school must give authorization for a woman to play a 'male contact sport' - If this is given and the woman is treated unfairly, that is discrimination. But never giving the woman a chance, according to the law, removes the opportunity to hold the school in violation. Hence, by refusing to allow women the chance to play from the get go, the school will avoid the situation altogether.

If you think they are going to risk losing a lawsuit similar to Duke's when the chance is there to avoid it altogether, which do you think they're gonna take?
posted by Hankins at 9:31 AM on October 22, 2000

Oliver, haven't you covered this enough already? Do you not want women playing men's sports? That's the message I'm getting.
posted by mathowie at 9:40 AM on October 22, 2000

Sorry. I was just providing followup. I do want women to play men's sports, but I want it to happen in an arena where its decided by their merits not by a stupid lawsuit. This is the last you'll hear of this one...
posted by owillis at 9:57 AM on October 22, 2000

Hey, I commend owillis for having the "stick-to-it-iveness" to see this story through from beginning. middle, to end.

You don't see that too often online or otherwise. Actually, I take part of that back. Online, I'm seeing a lot of backyard crusades being played out on personal sites about getting "ripped off" at Best Buy, trying to refuse the EULA for Win98 when it comes bundled with a laptop, and so forth.

owillis has at least chosen a topic that does have an effect on a larger chunk of society (if not all of it) and that's fine by me.

Asking if this story has been covered too much opens up the Ralph Nader can of worms. And lord knows you can't do that enough at MeFi. :-)
posted by ethmar at 10:34 AM on October 22, 2000

Sorry to put you on the spot owillis, I am impressed with the fact that you've followed this story through here, I guess I'm just not finding much interesting things about it (same can be said by many with regards to Nader, I'll give you that). I just hate to see someone being vilified because she used the court system to make sure it didn't happen to other women again.

Yes, suing to get your way may feel wrong, but sadly it's one of the only avenues an individual has for forcing change in America. It sounds like a real case of discrimination to me, and she proved it in a court of law. If she was just out for money, that would come through in a trial, she'd have no evidence to state her case.
posted by mathowie at 10:50 AM on October 22, 2000