Friday, June 8, 2007

Wrestling with Title IX: When Fair Become Unfair

Title: John Irving’s essay entitled Wrestling with Title IX poses a great argument and example of discrimination being discriminated against in society. The title of his essay is enticing and very creative, especially for his argument later on in the essay.

Thesis: Everyone is always trying to define what’s fair and determined as just within society. However, no matter how hard one tries, someone always claims and disagrees with a decision being made, accusing a new law as unfair and unjust itself. Irving argues against Title IX as a law used to enforce equal rights within the college and high school athletic setting, but the law in turn goes from a law advocating women’s rights to a law of violation to men’s rights, especially in wrestling.

Purpose: Irving goes about his essay in trying to get the reader to recognize what fairness really is and to persuade his readers to recognize the discrimination being experienced by men. The key to fairness is defining what is fair and just and realizing to learn to accept the fact that no matter where one goes or how hard one tries, fair is not always fair.

Method: Irving strongly demonstrates his knowledge as not only an excellent writer, but as someone who understands and knows his stuff. Irving establishes great credibility in his argument from the beginning when he gives knowledge to the reader that he himself was involved with the wrestling programs and therefore knows the rights and violations being administered first hand. The question posed from his reading is when does a law reach a level of fairness that is going to be accepted by all? Women’s rights have been a strong milestone that many advocates have had to oversee in the past decades. In fighting for their rights, Irving points out that once the law of Title IX was passed it has become a violation of men’s rights and their rights to equal opportunities in sports especially at the collegiate level.

College poses a great opportunity for anyone that decides to attend. It’s a place to make new friends, pursue your goal in whatever career field you decide to take on, and most importantly allows you to participate in new opportunities, especially sports. Conversely, not all students are being given that opportunity because of Title IX. In a country that allows for equal rights and equality through everything, Irving demonstrates that Title IX discriminates against men’s rights to play collegiate sports and does not give everyone the full opportunity to take on something new in their lives. Title IX states that colleges must meet one of three criteria, but Irving points out that in striving to meet those standards, men are being short changed. How are men supposed to have equal opportunity in sports when women are not as interested in intramurals or playing athletics at the college level as men? Why should men be punished because of a lack of participation by women? Not only do these pose strong questions, but Irving also supports his argument by pointing out that females make up about 56 percent of the college enrollment while men make up about 44 percent. In addition to that, men outrank women 4-1 or 3-1 in regards to intramural participation. In the middle of his argument, Irving poses an important question, “Can you imagine this rule being applied to all educational programs-classes in science, engineering, accounting, medicine or law? What about dance, drama or music-not to mention women’s studies”? With that in mind what would the point of getting an education be if that did happen? We would be right at the beginning of where we started with equal employment opportunities.

Persona: As mentioned before, Irving lets it be known to the reader his knowledge as a coach in wrestling and how Title IX has affected his life. By making the reader known of this, his argument is more credible and what he has to say is given a lot more respect from myself as a reader.

Closing Paragraph: I have one word for Irving’s closing paragraph: INSPIRING!! I was really impressed with the way in which he ended his essay because of how he pointed out that it’s not just at the collegiate level that people are trying to make things fair, but also for the younger age groups, even with Little League. Fairness is Irving’s main point that he’s trying to get across to his reader, and he does that by using his example of Little League involvement at the end of his essay.

Impression: Having cheered for wrestling in high school for two years I strongly agree and recognize how important of a sport it is to many men; and of course some women. As of right now I have a friend overseas wrestling for the junior Olympics in Bulgaria and Turkey and I’ve recognized how important this sport is to his life. So, why should men like my friend not be given that opportunity to continue to pursue something that he loves because of the ratio of women to men at his college could at one point in time become not fair. Honestly define fair? Is it fair to men that women have a lack of interest in sports? In the latter part of Irving’s essay he points out that although the number of high school wrestlers is high, the number of men allowed to wrestle at the collegiate level is extremely low, due to the ratio criterion. So, let’s take into perspective a different question. What are the men who aren’t allowed to wrestle doing with their time? Maybe they are the students who instead of taking time out of their day to go to wrestling practice, are the ones who are getting wasted on a school night, skipping classes the next day, hanging with the wrong crowd, and eventually flunking out of school. All because they were denied the right to participate in a sport that they love. Society often recognizes the importance of being involved in athletics and the opportunities that it gives to many students and college sports are no different.

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