An outside gender equity review found that female athletes at Michigan State University did not receive as much financial assistance and had less access to sports-related resources in proportion to their male counterparts. The report also noted complaints of subpar facilities, inferior apparel and scheduling conflicts. 

The review’s purpose is to make sure MSU complies with Title IX policy, specifically a clause that requires a school’s female athletic participation to be proportionate to the school’s female enrollment and that “treatment and benefits and athletic financial aid” are equitable in the athletic department.

Gabe Feldman, one of the nation’s preeminent experts in sports law, was hired to conduct the review as a condition of the university's settlement with members of MSU’s dissolved swim and dive teams.

Feldman started working with the athletic department in May and completed his review in Sept.

The findings

The review found that MSU is not in compliance with Title IX’s requirement that universities provide equitable athletic financial aid. Although 48.9% of MSU’s athletes are women, they received 46.3% of athletic financial assistance. 

Anything over a 1% disparity is not in compliance with the Title IX standard. MSU has a 2.6% disparity.

Feldman noted “potential inequities” regarding access to sporting facilities for female athletes. The report stated that "despite significant expenditures on facilities on campus, the last facility built for a women’s team at MSU was in 1998." 

Feldman listed several facilities, for both male and female sports, that “appear to be subpar” compared to others. He described the field hockey facility in particular as “problematic,” citing a lack of bathrooms and scheduling conflicts among the multiple teams that make use of it. 

MSU also failed to provide equitable dining services, the report said. Football, men’s and women’s basketball and ice hockey are the only teams with access to their own dining options and female athletes did not receive the same access to food that male athletes had. 

“Several female athletes stated that they often had to pay for food out of their own pocket because the food provided during the season was insufficient and also stated that they were not given access to supplements and items from the fueling station that were routinely given to male athletes,” the report said. “One student noted that ‘food is a major issue for all women’s sports.’”

While the review found that male and female athletic participation was properly counted, Feldman noted that teams cut a greater number of female than male athletes after their respective seasons began — 10 women compared to two men in total. 

Although the difference was not due to “inequitable treatment of female athletes or an effort to artificially inflate female athlete participation counts,” Feldman recommended MSU examine the disparity further. 

The review also found that a “disproportionate number of women’s teams do not have a Director of Operations.”

Some female athletes complained of receiving “relatively low-quality apparel, while others complained of a relatively insufficient quantity of apparel.” MSU has a department-wide contract with Nike that supplies its apparel. 

Despite these disparities, Feldman said MSU has shown “significant improvement recently” in providing dedicated and experienced athletic trainers for each sport, and a stand-alone mental health facility for athletes. The university also succeeded in supplying equitable housing, insurance coverage and access to support services for athletes.

Athletic Director Alan Haller said in a statement Monday that MSU recognizes "needed improvements for student-athlete financial aid assistance and in our athletic facilities to ensure (administrators are) providing a holistic environment for all student-athlete success.”

What’s next? 

MSU will work with Feldman to create a Gender Equity Plan, or GEP, by the end of the academic year, using the gender equity review as its basis. Once the GEP is created, it will be reviewed annually as it is executed. 

“The GEP will bring MSU into full Title IX compliance by the end of the 2026-2027 academic year, subject to extensions of time as deemed reasonable by (Feldman),” the report said.

MSU deputy spokesperson Dan Olsen said that ensuring athletic financial aid is distributed equitably and making improvements to athletic facilities were particular aspects they’ll be working on, but all aspects of the review will be discussed in the creation of the GEP. 

The history of MSU swim and dive

Universities typically don’t conduct reviews like this one. A lawsuit started by female members of MSU’s former swim and dive team, that almost made its way to the Supreme Court, resulted in an agreement to do a review of MSU’s compliance with Title IX. 

MSU announced its decision to cut its male and female swim and dive teams in Oct. 2020, citing “a financial crisis unlike any we've ever seen in college athletics” brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Then-Athletic Director Bill Beekman later told The State News that the team was on the chopping block since fall 2019, as the school couldn’t keep up with the cost of maintaining the swimmers’ facilities.

Former female swimmers filed the lawsuit against MSU shortly after their team was cut. They argued that by cutting a sport with so many female athletes, the university had changed the overall gender-ratio of male-to-female opportunities in sports. This disparity, they argued, violated the Title IX policy requiring that athletic participation be proportional to enrollment.

MSU and the swimmers disagreed on how exactly to measure “substantial proportionality” in court. MSU argued that since their participation gap — the difference between athletic participation for males and females — is subject to “natural fluctuations” in overall student enrollment, it’s unfair to be expected to maintain exactly even athletic counts, especially as a larger university. Former swimmers argued the statute demands exact numerical compliance.

They settled their lawsuit in Jan., agreeing to end the case in exchange for further review and revision of Title IX policies by the university's athletic department. Their settlement did not outline a plan for the team’s reinstatement. 

The former swimmers’ lawyer told the State News in July that they felt left out of the process of choosing Gabe Feldman to conduct the review, describing it as an “one-sided endeavor.” 

Feldman did end up speaking to the former swim and dive teams for his review, although his findings were not included in the review. 

“Given that MSU no longer fields swimming and diving teams, the issues raised by the former MSU swimmers — including inadequate facilities and locker rooms, insufficient food and unsafe drinking water, inadequate apparel and insufficient access to coaching — were not included in the discussion above, but, given the issues raised by these athletes, MSU should continue to monitor and assess all teams to ensure equitable treatment with respect to benefits, treatment and services,” the statement said.