Citizen's Voice: Search committee for athletic director needs more women
On Jan. 21, the News Sentinel announced the membership of the search committee for the University of Tennessee's next athletic director. Five male faces and one female face were spread across the front of the Sports section. What’s wrong with this picture? Everything. At the time UT was instigating its shotgun wedding of the historically separate women’s and men’s athletic departments, those involved were told that henceforth they would be combined and function as co-equals. So much for that deception. Co-equality never has been the case, and as the committee portraits so aptly demonstrate, that will likely never be the case.
If Chancellor-elect Beverly Davenport is seriously supportive of diversity, that is certainly not reflected by the committee critical to one of her first and most important decisions. It is my hope that she had no hand in creating this gender-biased committee, but whether she did or not, she must correct this blunder, this slap in the face to women, if she is to have leadership credibility.
The membership of the committee could be attacked on many fronts, but my focus is on gender inequality. Why is that important? The reasons are many. Male and female perspectives are different. There is an institutional problem with men, many of whom are athletes, sexually abusing women, as has been clearly demonstrated by Title IX violations and lawsuits resulting in the payment of penalties in the neighborhood of $3 million. Men are insensitive to this problem. The women’s athletic program has been diminished by the loss of the Lady Vol logo, uniform colors and their treasured Lady Vol name (except, we know, for basketball).
No names of potential female athletic directors have been mentioned publicly. The assumption is that the leader will be a male. The one woman on the committee is not known for standing up for women. Rather, she is generally regarded as Dave Hart’s token female in his administrative inner circle, a woman who no doubt was chosen to be his primary cheerleader, his apologist and someone who would be a reliable crony of the good ol' boys club.
The “One Tennessee” athletic department is a lie. It is nothing more than an expanded men’s department with the addition of female teams. The unacknowledged but widely suspected purposes for this merger were to raise the overall grade-point average for athletes, as well as to destroy the Lady Vols' identity in order to diminish attention to their superior athletic accomplishments over those of the men. The committee should be reconstituted to be half men and half women, and it should not be stacked in favor of Phil Fulmer, as is currently the case. Females appointed should be strong, independent women who will stand up for women and voice the concerns of women, someone like Lady Vols donor Sharon Lord. Anything less would be a mockery of the process and an embarrassment to an athletic department that has already suffered too many embarrassments over the past few years.
Barbara J. Mead is professor emeritus of Human Performance and Sport Studies at UT and is a Knoxville resident.