What do high school cheerleaders have in common with stadium lights, locker room amenities, and travel opportunities? They must be provided equally to boys' and girls' sports teams for a school to comply with Title IX, according to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR). In one upstate New York athletic conference, that decision had a big effect on basketball games this winter.

Last April, the parent of a female athlete at Johnson City (N.Y.) High School filed a complaint with the OCR over cheerleading inequity at several schools in New York's Southern Tier Athletic Conference (STAC). Because high schools in the conference provided cheerleaders for boys' basketball games but not girls' games, the complaint alleged an inequity in terms of benefits and support services.

After holding teleconferences with all 19 public high schools in the STAC, the OCR ruled that schools were violating Title IX by not providing cheerleaders for an equal number of boys' and girls' games during the winter sports season. The only exception involved playoffs: If one basketball team made the postseason and the other did not, a cheerleading squad would be allowed to perform at those playoff games, even if it made the total number of games with cheerleaders unequal between the genders.

Most schools in the conference complied, usually by dropping boys' away games from the cheerleaders' schedule and replacing them with girls' home games. Three schools, however, appealed the decision and continued to schedule their cheerleaders only for boys' games.

While the OCR's ruling directly affects only schools in the STAC, New York State Public High School Athletic Association Executive Director Nina Van Erk sent a letter to school districts across the state urging them to re-evaluate the equity of their promotional activities. Van Erk told the Associated Press that the letter encourages "equality in all promotion and publicity, not just cheerleading. Boys and girls need to be treated equally in all regards—in any publicity, any funding, any support."

But administrators, coaches, and students at some of the affected schools have questioned whether the true spirit of Title IX was upheld with the ruling. "At a lot of schools, the truth is girls' basketball players don't want cheerleaders on the sidelines—and by the same token, the cheerleaders don't want to cheer for girls' games," explains Richard Stank, President of the STAC. "To be in compliance with the OCR's ruling, the schools would be doing something that didn't make either group happy."

Donna Lopiano, CEO of the Women's Sports Foundation (WSF), says that's the wrong way to approach the issue. "Someone who's being discriminated against cannot simply decide that it's all right," she says. "Cheerleading squads are recognized student organizations that exist to advance school spirit and support the team they're cheering for—if the school provides that for a boys' team, it's unacceptable to deny it to a girls' team.

"If a girls' team isn't comfortable with the cheerleaders' routines or the way they're dressed, that's a separate issue the school needs to address," Lopiano continues. "It's the school's job to make sure the cheerleaders meet an acceptable cultural standard. The school can't just decide not to provide them."

For some schools that did choose to mandate cheer support at girls' games, the results were positive for both athletes and cheerleaders. Lynda McGarry, the mother of a high school basketball player in Spencerport, N.Y., wrote an editorial in the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat & Chronicle praising the change. "My daughter was not too keen about this idea at first, suspecting that the cheerleaders would not want to be there to cheer for other girls," she wrote. "However ... at the first home game of our girls' basketball team, our family was pleasantly surprised at the enthusiasm of the cheerleaders and the crowd, which was much larger than usual. It seemed that both the cheerleaders and the players had a new respect for each other's sports."

In other Title IX news, at the collegiate level, Boise State University is in the midst of bucking a nationwide trend. Rather than cutting men's sports to bring itself into compliance, BSU is adding four new women's sports.

"This is the right way to do it," Gene Bleymaier, Athletic Director at Boise State, told the Idaho Statesman. "When [Title IX] was passed, it was not intended to reduce the opportunities for men. The intent was to increase the opportunities for women. Not only are we committed to Title IX, but we're committed to gender equity and we're committed to proportionality, which is the strongest statement that you can make."

Under Bleymaier's plan, Boise State has already added a women's swimming and diving team, which competed for the first time this past winter. The Broncos will welcome women's soccer in 2008, lacrosse in 2012, and another yet-to-be-determined sport in 2017. By that time, the school hopes to achieve Title IX compliance under the law's proportionality prong, but in the meantime BSU is most likely in compliance under the "history and continuing practice of program expansion" provision of the statute.

At James Madison University, the opposite path was taken last fall, and the school continues to find itself in a firestorm of controversy. When JMU's Board of Visitors announced that the school was dropping 10 sports to reduce costs and achieve proportionality, students held protests on campus and local editorial page writers spent months debating the decision. And in an unprecedented move, United States Olympic Committee CEO James Scherr sent a letter to JMU's president condemning the cuts.

Noting that virtually all the dropped sports had Olympic connections, Scherr wrote: "It is well documented that the spirit of the Title IX law is to ensure opportunities for participation in sport are proportional and fair for men and women. We have seen universities across the nation inappropriately use Title IX as an excuse to justify the elimination of sport programs ... [The USOC] welcomes the opportunity to work with you in identifying viable alternatives to keep these intercollegiate sports alive at James Madison University."

Despite the efforts of Scherr and JMU's campus activists, Athletic Director Jeff Bourne has announced that the cuts will proceed as scheduled. As of July 1, 2007, the school will eliminate men's archery, cross country, gymnastics, indoor track, outdoor track, swimming, and wrestling. It will also cut women's archery, fencing, and gymnastics. Scholarships for current athletes and verbal commitments made by coaches will still be honored, so Bourne estimates it will be four to five years before the school eliminates all funding for the dropped sports.