Quinnipiac University announced Tuesday that it will reinstate its women’s volleyball team as a result of an injunction issued last week in a Title IX lawsuit against the school, which is in Hamden Connecticut. US District Judge Stefan R. Underhill issued the injunction last week after testimony earlier this month by the team’s coach and several student athletes. Concurrently with Quinnipiac’s announcement of the reinstatement of the women’s volleyball program, the school announced the indoor men’s track program will be cut, reported the Hartford Courant.
Andrew Schneider, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut, which filed the case, said: “today’s decision to cut the men’s indoor track team to keep the women’s volleyball team is a false choice that unnecessarily pits men athletes against women athletes,” according to the Associated Press.
The lawsuit alleges that Quinnipiac violates Title IX by failing to provide equal opportunity to women athletes to participate in varsity-level sports, according to the Hartford Courant. Coach Robin Sparks testified that the school takes names of male student athletes off team rosters and then reinstitutes them in order to make the school’s Title IX reports appear to be in compliance with the law, according to the Associated Press. The lawsuit was filed in response to a March announcement by Quinnipiac that the school was cutting women’s volleyball, men’s golf, and men’s outdoor track and changing competitive cheerleading to a varsity sport.
