The Lake Oswego School District was faced with a Title IX lawsuit last year regarding the girls softball team’s facilities and whether or not they were equal with the boys baseball team’s. The girls team would have to travel away from the school to practice on a dirt field, whereas the boys had a turf field right at the high school for them to practice. Lake Oswego School District looked into the issues that had been brought to their attention and are still working to create an equal environment for both the boys and girls teams. They are planning to make improvements on locker rooms, lights, dugouts and practicing facilities by winter of 2017, or spring of 2018.       

“West Linn High School is being proactive by having the school district doing a self audit. As they do this they will go through this we will go and check all the schools teams facilities to see where we are, and if anything is in need of looking at the district will address them,” Mark Horak, athletic director, said.

As Lake Oswego has dealt, and is still dealing with their Title IX problems, West Linn and the other high schools enter a danger zone of being watched for potential violations. Rumors have been going around about the girls and boys locker rooms being unequal.

“The district here has people who come in, look around and make sure that everything we have is up to code before we use it. Also, we can’t forget about separate team rooms that add to the main section of the girls locker room,” Horak said.

As said on the side of the article, Title IX does not refer to the equality and size of locker rooms, it refers to the accessibility of participation to each sport.

“To the extent of my knowledge, I don’t know about any direct complaints about any Title IX issues at and around our school. When you step back and look at what constitutes equality. Also, before the school was put together, they had to look at all of it to be sure that it’s up to code,” Horak said.

Size of the locker rooms does not always mean equality, there are other factors that come into play. Factors such as how many athletes are in need of a locker room, and how nice other facilities are.

Above is a photo of the girls locker room, and below is a photo of the boys locker room. Although there have been some rumors about differences in size, there is no ground for a Title IX violation.

Title IX — or “The Patsy Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act” — is a federal law that was implemented in the United States in 1972. It states that no educational or otherwise government-funded program shall discriminate against anybody on the basis of sex. In other words, it is illegal for government programs to be sexist. Title IX is considered to be part of the “Education Amendments of 1972,” a series of amendments passed in the United States regarding the public education system. Although different versions of the Title IX law exist in different regions of the country, it always ultimately means the same thing.