For a school known throughout Connecticut as being more secretive than the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), the private institution, Quinnipiac University (KWIHN'-uh-pee-ak), located in Hamden, Conn., has been told by a U.S. District Court judge in the state that that competitive cheerleading is not a sport, and the university remains under an injunction that requires the school to keep its women's volleyball team.
Several volleyball players and their coach successfully sued the university in 2009 after it announced it would eliminate volleyball for budgetary reasons and replace it with a competitive cheer squad.
U.S. District Court Judge Stefan R. Underhill ruled in their favor, saying that competitive cheerleading had not developed enough to be considered a college sport for Title IX purposes, and he ordered the school to keep the volleyball team and come up with a compliance plan, according to boston.com.
Title IX, introduced in 1972, opened doors for girls and women by banning sex discrimination in all federally funded school programs, including sports.
Underhill said in his ruling on Monday that the additions of the cheer team, now called ''acrobatics and tumbling,'' and a women's rugby team (which went undefeated and as a result won the Tri-State Conference championship) do not give the university's female students competitive opportunities equal to those offered to male students and he denied the school's request to lift his previous injunction, reported boston.com.
Quinnipiac spokeswoman Lynn Bushnell issued a statement Tuesday saying the school is disappointed with the ruling, but ''remains committed to its long standing plans to continue expanding opportunities in women's athletics," according to boston.com.
This ordeal has become a black eye for the Bobcats who in recent years have seen its national profile jump, expediently, both in the academic and sports fields.
In addition to opening a medical school and having a highly-respected and nationally-ranked nursing, business and communications programs, its men's ice hockey team is currently ranked No.1 in the country, its women's basketball team is on the cusp of being selected as one of the 64 teams to take part in the NCAA Women's Final Four Tournament (first time in school history) and the athletic program announced that starting in the 2013-14 season, the school will jump from the Northeast Conference to the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (a conference with more respectability nationally, that has higher TV visibility, thanks to ESPN, which will aid the school during the recruitment process).
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