When a court determined Michigan State University (MSU) was discriminating against women in the Athletic Department, the lawyers agreed on an independent gender equity review.

Champion Women analyzed that Title IX review and found that it minimized the inequalities women are facing at MSU in multiple instances.

[Title IX Review link: https://msu.edu/-/media/assets/msu/docs/issues-statements/msu-gender-equity-review-report.pdf ]

Champion Women found flaws in the expert's use of data: the review found a 2.6% disparity in athletic scholarship dollars between male and female athletes, while failing to state the many millions of dollars women missed out on, due to that 2.6% disparity.

Prior to the release of the MSU expert review, Champion Women had already filed an official complaint against MSU with the Office of Civil Rights, the enforcement agency for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Education. You can read that here: https://titleixschools.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Champion-Women-OCR-Complaint-Michigan-State-University-2023.pdf

"To deny women equal opportunities because they're women is denying women of a very different future." -- Nancy Hogshead, CEO Champion Women

Champion Women then followed up with further OCR materials that included new, detailed graphs illustrating and highlighting the disparities between men and women at MSU. You can read those OCR materials with our graphs, starting on page 7 here: https://titleixschools.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Michigan-State-University-Complaint-Form-English-PDF.pdf

Nancy Hogshead, CEO of Champion Women, emphasized that scholarship dollars can be underestimated when only considering the student-athlete ratio and ignoring the fact that women are being denied teams and opportunities to participate equally with men. Scholarship dollars are important sources of funding for educational attainment, that women are being denied because of their sex. If comparing the male and female student-body to the athletic scholarship ratio, e.g., if MSU had provided its male and female students with equal opportunities to compete, Michigan State will need to add $3,135,110 additional athletic scholarship dollars, to balance out the amount MSU provides to its male students.

If, for some reason, the OCR ignores the court's finding that MSU was not providing women with equal playing opportunities, and determines that MSU is, in fact, not discriminating against women's opportunities to compete in sport, then the student-athlete ratio is used, rather than the student body ratio. In that case, MSU would still need to provide its current women student athletes with $2,620,726 more in athletic scholarship aid, to match the amount MSU provides its male athletes.

In other words, if women had equal opportunities to play sports, athletic financial assistance should be increased by 5.4%, rather than 2.6%. ($2,620,726 is still significant!)

(Champion Women did not calculate the impact on scholarships on MSU's practice of padding women's teams, but not men's teams. Total male athletes for men's teams equaled NCAA average squad sizes, while total female athletes were 100 additional women over NCAA average squad sizes, denying these women the same educational experience, but many more millions in scholarships for women.)

As a multiple Olympic gold medal swimmer for the United States, Nancy Hogshead further reinforced the numerous benefits of sports, including more education, better financially in their professional lives, better physical and mental health, stressed the importance of rectifying gender inequalities in sports. "To deny women equal opportunities because they're women is denying women of a very different future."