The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has closed its review of two discrimination complaints filed by a UC Davis female wrestler and a former wrestling coach.
The office said it found no basis for former wrestling coach Mike Burch’s complaint that his contract was not renewed out of retaliation for supporting a UC Davis woman wrestler, who filed a gender discrimination complaint after she was dropped from the campus team. It also accepted the campus’s "Voluntary Resolution Plan" as a resolution of the complaint brought by the wrestler.
Civil rights office staff met with university administrators and with the complainants in August to discuss the claims. UC Davis was notified of the office’s decision in two letters recently delivered to Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef.
In a complaint filed with the civil rights office in May and cited in its letter to Vanderhoef, the wrestler claimed that UC Davis recruits only male student-athletes for the wrestling team, prohibits women from participating in intercollegiate competition and using the services of athletic trainers, and denies financial aid to women wrestlers.
"The complaint was resolved by the university’s actions and assurances," wrote Robert Scott, team leader for the Office for Civil Rights’ regional office in San Francisco in an Oct. 16 letter.
To clarify its support of female wrestlers and to resolve the complaint, UC Davis agreed, he said, to implement a voluntary resolution plan.
The plan concedes no violation of federal or state law and exceeds Title IX gender-equity requirements, according to the civil rights office. In it, Associate Vice Chancellor for Human Resources Dennis Shimek, states that:
• Men and women athletes will be encouraged to compete for a position on the intercollegiate wrestling team, with final squad members selected by the team’s coach based on the highest skill and competitive ability within weight classes.
• The team’s coach will actively recruit the best qualified athletes, regardless of gender, with both male and female athletes eligible for financial aid based on merit.
• The university will sponsor a Wrestling Club for both women and men, helping to ensure opportunities for women to participate in competitive wrestling. Club members will be able to practice concurrently with the intercollegiate wrestlers and compete in open meets. They will be provided the same medical insurance and use of facilities as other university sports clubs.
Wrestling as a contact sport is exempt from the requirement that any intercollegiate team must be coed, Scott wrote, but since UC Davis has decided to field a team open to men and women, the university "has undertaken to provide equivalent benefits, services and opportunities, as required," to female and male athletes.
Burch claimed that UC Davis failed to renew his contract for the 2001-2002 season in retaliation for his support of the women wrestlers’ complaints. But UC Davis administrators insisted that the decision not to renew Burch’s contract had nothing to do with that support.
In his letter, Scott notes that Athletic Director Greg Warzecka and three other athletic program administrators first discussed ending Burch’s contract prior to learning that a civil rights claim had been filed by the female wrestler.
"OCR learned at the time that the meeting took place, none of the Senior Athletic Program Administrators was aware of any of the protected activity (supporting the female students) by the coach," Scott wrote.
He concluded: "Several people were consulted regarding whether to renew the complainant’s contract; they all independently and consistently reported that a decision regarding the adverse action was reached in April … prior to the protected activity of the coach."
Scott further concluded it was not appropriate for the office to discuss or draw conclusions about the merits of the reasons why UC Davis didn’t renew Burch’s contract.