GoLocalProv | Politics | Side of the Rhode: Who’s Hot and Who’s Not? – May 26, 2023

NOT

Brown Slashed Sports in 2020 to Become More Competitive — It Hasn’t Worked

In May of 2020, Brown University President Christina Paxson admitted that the University’s sports were not competitive and that she was slashing 11 varsity sports to repurpose the dollars to increase the remaining programs’ chances of succeeding. 

According to Paxson in her comments in 2020 announcing the cuts,  “In the decade ending in 2018, Brown earned 2.8% of Ivy League titles, the lowest among member schools. The initiative will implement a net reduction in varsity teams from 38 to 29.”

“We envision varsity athletes who, as Brown students, are among the most academically talented in the world, who also compete on teams that are among the most competitive among our peers,” Paxson said at the time of the announcement in 2020.

Paxson later reinstated some sports after alumni and student backlash — and threatened litigation.

In 2020, Brown University slashed sports, faced federal Title IX litigation, had embarrassing emails released, canceled athletic schedules due to the pandemic and saw the departure of the long-time athletic director Jack Hayes.

The outcome has been a measurable failure for men’s sports and an increase for women’s sports. But the majority of Brown’s programs have losing records and consistently finish at or near the bottom of the Ivy League.

More Title IX Litigation

Just after the announcement of the sports cuts, litigation was threatened and filed after the decision to cut eleven sports at Brown and then to reinstate men’s track and cross country. Men’s track has a significant number of Black students participating.

In a motion filed with the federal district court of Rhode Island, the original legal representatives for Amy Cohen and the other women athletes who brought the original suit against Brown in 1992, say the University violated the terms of their agreement when it announced the elimination of five women’s varsity athletic teams, resulting in non-compliance with the court-ordered requirement that “intercollegiate level participation opportunities for male and female students are provided in numbers substantially proportionate to their respective enrollments.”

According to the ACLU release on the filing, the cuts announced by Brown “will eliminate participation opportunities for twice as many women as for men,” also observing that “throughout the last 22 years of operation of the Joint Agreement, not once have women athletes at Brown ever reached their proportion within the undergraduate enrollment and at all times have remained the ‘underrepresented’ gender.”

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