Happy Birthday, Title IX

PRINCETON, N.J. -- The Ivy League will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the passage of Title IX by speaking with current and former League administrators, coaches, students and student-athletes concerning the impact of Title IX and what they feel is in store for the future.

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 states, in part, that “no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity.”

Starting on Sunday, June 24, IvyLeagueSports.com will speak to a different Ivy Leaguer each day to get their thoughts on Title IX and what it has meant not only to college athletics, but also society as a whole. Those Ivies will include, among others, former Ivy League Executive Director Jeff Orleans, who was part of the group that wrote Title IX, former Cornell women’s ice hockey player and Brown head coach Digit Murphy, former Dartmouth women’s basketball player and current Princeton head coach Courtney Banghart and Yale graduate and Olympic gold medalist in figure skating Sarah Hughes.

Moreover, the Women’s Sports Foundation, in collaboration with espnW and Women in Cable Telecommunications, honored six former Ivies as part of its “40 for 40” list of women who impacted society after playing sports in high school or college during the 40 years of the Title IX era. The honorees were recognized at an event on June 21 in Washington.

Those luminaries include Alice Gast (Princeton), the president at Lehigh University, Kirsten Gillibrand (Dartmouth), U.S. Senator from New York, Kathy Levinson (Harvard), managing director for Golden Seeds, Irene Rosenfeld (Cornell), CEO of Kraft Foods, Jill Vialet (Harvard), founder and president of Playworks and Meg Whitman (Princeton), CEO of Hewlett Packard.

For 40 days, starting on Sunday, June 24, check back to IvyLeagueSports.com to get daily postings and videos of Ivies discussing Title IX and its impact.