UC Berkeley Web Feature

Chancellor Birgeneau's statement to state Senate committee regarding women's athletics at Cal

24 August 2007

Senator Florez and members of the committee — I'm pleased to welcome you to UC Berkeley for this important Title IX hearing.  We are proud of our and California's longstanding tradition of leadership for women in college athletics, which began in 1896 with the first-ever women's collegiate basketball game in the United States, Cal vs. Stanford.

We appreciate your committee's interest in issues of gender equity in college athletics and look forward to a productive dialogue that will inform you of our commitment to maintaining an inclusive and supportive work and education environment.  We have made great progress in developing a robust women's sports program here at Cal, but we also recognize that there are improvements that can be made, and we are continually working to address those areas to enhance equal access, participation, and opportunity.

Cal is proud of the many outstanding successes achieved by all of our student-athletes, and we are committed to supporting their continued excellence. The Athletics Department is led by our outstanding Athletic Director, Sandy Barbour, who was recently honored as the Division I Administrator of the Year by the National Association of Collegiate Women's Athletics Administrators.  Half of the top administrators in the Department are women.

As Sandy will address in her testimony, the data for women's athletics at Cal affirm our strong commitment to Title IX, and UC Berkeley's status as a national leader in women's sports.  Our teams consistently rank in the top 10 and this year alone, Cal women athletes won eight national titles—five in swimming and three in indoor track & field—and our women's basketball team received a second straight berth in the NCAA tournament.
The campus sponsors a total of 29 intercollegiate sports, 15 for women and 14 for men, and provides more participation opportunities and more intercollegiate programs for women than any other school in the Pac 10, besides Stanford.

Although today I am speaking to you as Chancellor of UC Berkeley, my first contact with intercollegiate sports at UCB happened a number of years ago when the youngest of my three daughters played varsity soccer for Colgate.  In fact, she played in a tournament out here in Berkeley against Cal.  I know that for my daughter Title IX was transformational and I have a great personal appreciation of the opportunities that it has rightfully made available for women.

UC Berkeley has a long history of leadership on issues of equity and inclusion.  We can proudly claim that the disabilities rights movement began at Berkeley.  Inclusion is one of our core values and a foundational plank of our vision for Berkeley.  We are the first campus in the UC system to create a portfolio at the Vice-Chancellor level for Equity and Inclusion and one of a few in the nation.  The vice chancellor's portfolio will include responsibilities for accessibility, climate and inclusion issues for faculty, students and staff.  The appointment of Professor Gibor Basri to this new position was approved by the Regents in July.  He will have oversight of the campus's numerous efforts to recruit, retain, promote, and provide a welcoming environment to a broad diversity of faculty, students and staff.

Continuing to build and maintain a diverse workforce and an equitable work and educational environment is essential to our vision of an inclusive university and we are committed to actively promoting and recruiting a qualified and diverse workforce., Providing a work environment that is free of discrimination and harassment is not only a legal obligation but essential to fulfilling our moral and ethical obligations.  

Specifically in Athletics, we have made a number of improvements in the last several years related to women's programs.  The campus recently completed a comprehensive self-study of our athletics programs as part of our ongoing NCAA certification process. This study, based on surveying student-athletes and extensive additional research, chronicles significant improvement for women's athletics since the previous report in 1998.  We have significantly enhanced training facilities for women's sports, added new women's sports, created a University Athletic Board to advise the Chancellor which has a Gender Equity and Diversity Subcommittee, chaired by the Chair of our Academic Senate, to identify and address issues and concerns in this area.

Can we be doing more?  Yes, and we will do more, which Sandy Barbour will elaborate on during her testimony.  Our athletic and recreational sports budgets do not receive State funds and a significant challenge on the UC Berkeley campus is the state of our training facilities.  One of the primary goals of building a new Student-Athlete High Performance Center (SAHPC), currently delayed by litigation, is to provide better facilities and training opportunities for our women's intercollegiate teams.  Most of the media attention has been focused on the benefits of the center for football; however, for many women's sports the new center represents a move from having minimal facilities to top-quality training and locker facilities.  Seven women's intercollegiate programs will have facilities in the SAHPC.  These include crew, field hockey, golf, gymnastics, lacrosse, soccer and softball.

Women's athletics has advanced significantly in the past 25 years, and we at UC Berkeley take great pride in the important role our campus has played in this history. We consistently and continually evaluate the athletic interests of all our students to ensure that our programs fully, fairly, and equitably reflect those interests.

We support the goal of these hearings to understand better the challenges facing colleges and universities as they work to provide both men and women a high quality collegiate sports experience.  We are strongly committed to Title IX and gender equity and to providing our student athletes with exemplary sports programs and a world class education.  While balancing all of these priorities is not without challenge, we remain committed to striving for excellence and providing an equitable environment for our faculty, staff, students and student-athlete champions of the future. 

Senator, we thank you and your committee for the opportunity to provide this testimony.

— Robert J. Birgeneau
    Chancellor, University of California, Berkeley