You’ve probably seen those flashy Nike NKE uniforms the University of Oregon’s football team dons for each game. Would you believe the university gives its beach volleyball team hand-me-downs that are tattered and often don’t fit?

There’s no gleaming facility for beach volleyball on campus. In fact, the team practices and competes at a public park that has no stands for spectators or doors on the bathroom stalls. There are no dedicated medical personnel, inadequate travel accommodations and daily allowances, and no scholarships.

According to the class action complaint filed in December by the beach volleyball and women’s rowing teams, no men’s team at the school is treated this badly, and this disparate treatment of women student athletes is a violation of Title IX, the federal legislation that requires gender equity in athletics.

One of the two lead plaintiffs, beach volleyball player Ashley Schroeder told me, “I didn’t want to file a lawsuit against the school that I love, but, for them to allow it to go on for so long, it made me question, ‘why do they hate our team so much?’ It makes me feel not valued and not appreciated by the school at all. We had to do something about it.”

Title IX requires that slots for participation in university sports be proportionate to the number of women and men enrolled in the school. The complaint alleges that to meet this requirement, the University of Oregon would have to provide 94 additional spots for women.

Part of the solution seems obvious. The women’s rowing team has a long and successful history as a club sport, but the university refuses to sponsor the team, despite obvious interest and ability.

Elise Haverland, the lead plaintiff for the rowers, told me, “I, and a lot of the rest of the plaintiffs, and, as stuff comes up, probably a lot of the women on campus, don’t feel valued. I think that’s the case for a lot of women athletes and potential athletes. I think that’s the main thing. It’s been going on for so long – and it’s got to the point where we have to file a lawsuit about it – they aren’t willing to fix inequities that are very, very clear. It makes me, and I’m sure it makes others, feel undervalued.”

As members of a club sport, rowers must pay fees and their own expenses, making the sport inaccessible to many potential student athletes who can’t afford to participate. Elise explained, “The lack of resources that the rowing teams gets, as a club sport, and the addition of dues makes it so that it’s a sport that people can’t try. It creates a barrier for a lot of people. For the rowing team specifically, that’s one of the reasons why I am really interested in fighting for us to be a varsity sport. So that the opportunity to just try it is open to that many more people.”

The financial impact of gender disparities is felt across athletics and the university.

Arthur H. Bryant, attorney for the plaintiffs, explained, “Women are 49% of the student-athletes, but the school spends only 25% of its athletics dollars and 15% of its recruiting dollars on them. It also deprives them of equal athletic financial aid. To make up for the unequal athletic aid it paid its male student-athletes from 2017-18 to 2021-22, the past five years for which data is publicly available, Oregon would have to pay over $4.5 million in damages to its female student-athletes. And the unequal expenditures are, of course, continuing.”

Ashley noted that beach volleyball funding is so low that the team has had to stay on

air mattresses at teammates’ houses when they couldn’t afford hotels. Her mother often brings her food in the middle of a tournament because there is not a support staff to meet student athletes’ needs. The team can’t afford to charter a bus, and so the coach drives a van that doesn’t have enough seats for everyone, and so some players pile in the back without seats or seatbelts. Dinner, while traveling, is often from a gas station along the way.

Not only are the women who are competing for the university underfunded relative to their male peers, according to the complaint, but women who could be participating in those 94 slots are missing out on opportunities for scholarships as well as competition.

According to Ashley, the university’s disparate treatment has also cost beach volleyball players Name-Image-Likeness (NIL) opportunities that allow student athletes to earn money through endorsing products, giving autographs, speaking at events, or posting on social media. Without the university’s publicity machine behind them, these student athletes are not able to generate the kinds of followings that ensure lucrative NIL opportunities.

Generally, beach volleyball is an afterthought. The university decided to leave the Pac-12 and join the Big10 based on football. The Big10 doesn’t have beach volleyball. When Ashley asked a compliance officer about this, the officer seems surprised because they had not even thought about it.

The University of Oregon is not alone in missing the mark on Title IX. In fact, in NCAA Division I schools, athletics programs spend twice the amount on men’s sports than on women’s, and the gap has been increasing in recent years.

Despite 50+ years of Title IX, ongoing patriarchal valuing of men’s sports, especially football, and the corporatization of college sports have kept women student athletes at a disadvantage. With multimillionaire coaches and an ever-expanding need to fund new facilities, college athletics departments, particularly at DI schools, focus more on revenue generation that the college athlete experience.

Yet, fewer than 25 of the more than 300 DI programs generate more than they spend, and university spending on sports is outpacing spending on instruction and research.

Researchers Jordan Bass and Joshua I Newman argue that as a main economic and marketing engine for universities, many athletic departments are “too big to fail,” and this dependence on success, primarily in football, means universities often refuse to see problems in athletics, whether sex abuse or Title IX violations. The corporate university, with its budget reliant on athletic success, cannot afford the consequences of a failed football program, despite the effects on other sports.

Non-revenue-generating sports and individual student athletes, especially women, are easily overlooked in the corporate university because they fall on the cost side of the financial equation. The beach volleyball and women’s rowing teams at the University of Oregon, however, are refusing to be silent or invisible and are turning to the courts for redress.

Elise summed up their desire: “The main thing for me is that we are not looking for treatment that is better than anyone else. We are not looking for opportunities that shouldn’t be awarded to us. We are looking for equal treatment. A level playing field. So, I would like to see the university just give us that opportunity, give us that equality, and I would like them to show us that we are valued on campus and at this school because we should be.”