Women's sports and schools.

Toni Smith, senior captain of a Division III women's basketball team at Manhattanville College, a small school in Westchester, New York, refused to salute the flag in protest against the upcoming war on Iraq. During the National Anthem, she stood facing a wall, her left side to the American flag. Supportive teammates moved nearer to her in support. Ms. Smith was also supported by her parents and her college president. Even the New York Daily News covered her protest sympathetically (February 24, 2003, www.nydailynews.com).

In 1972, as a result of the women's movement, a law called Title IX banned sex discrimination in schools both in athletics and academics. Now the Bush administration is out to dismantle it. The impact of Title IX has been immense. In 1971, fewer than 300,000 high school girls played interscholastic sports; today between 2.4 and 2.8 million girls play. Between 1972 and 1995, the number of girls playing high school basketball increased by 300 percent. Academically, since Title IX forbade high schools from expelling girls who became pregnant, the drop-out rate for these girls declined significantly. Women and girls have taken far more math and science and gotten advanced degrees as a result of Title IX. A law advancing such equal opportunity automatically seems to become a Bush target (In These Times, March 31, 2003).