Cougars earn honor for creating diverse environment

PULLMAN – The issue of diversity in sports, explains Dr. George Cunningham, is not one often associated with positive stories.

So Cunningham, a professor at Texas A&M and the director of that school’s laboratory for diversity in sports, set about to reward those schools that have done well in creating athletic programs that foster and succeed in creating a diverse environment.

Considering every school in Division I-A – more than 115, in all – Cunningham came up with 10 schools that did especially well. Washington State is one of them.

Using six categories as his guide – Title IX compliance, diversity strategy, African-American graduation rates for men and women and employee diversity by sex and race – Cunningham said he used nothing but empirical data to come up with his list.

“Schools that did not do well in diversity,” Cunningham said, “they can look at the Washington States or the Wisconsin-Madisons (another overall award recipient) … they can look at these universities and say, ‘Hey, they’re doing really good things. How did they excel in the area of diversity?’

“It’s all objective data; it’s not just my opinion on who’s doing well or who’s doing poorly. The data back up everything that we report.”

WSU came up on Cunningham’s short list in only one of the six individual categories, Title IX compliance. But by doing well across the board, WSU earned the distinction of a top-10 school overall. This is the first year Cunningham and his department have issued the awards, though they plan to do so annually.

“It’s nice to receive the award,” WSU Athletic Director Jim Sterk said. “We’re working to get better and continue to grow. It’s a priority with us and we want to do what’s right.”

WSU was one of the first schools in the country to come into full compliance with Title IX, reaching that point more than a decade ago in part because of Blair vs. WSU, a 1986 case that resulted in state courts mandating gender equity under an equal rights amendment.

But as Cunningham said, diversity in that one area was not enough to boost WSU to an overall award. It is success across the board that led to the honor, and that’s something that school officials are happy to see.

“Frankly, I think we do a pretty good job,” said Senior Associate Athletic Director Marcia Saneholtz, also the department’s senior woman administrator. “It’s nice when somebody recognizes it. We’re thrilled with it because we do work hard here on these issues.”