The Office for Civil Rights conducted an investigation of Mesa’s athletic facilities following a lawsuit filed by a former head women’s basketball coach, claiming that Mesa was in violation of Title IX, claiming that the college discriminated against athletes based on their sex.

These allegations were filed on July 4, 2008 by the National Center for Lesbian Rights on behalf of Lorri Sulpizio, former women’s head coach and her assistant and domestic partner Cathy Bass.

According to NCLR, Sulpizio and Bass claimed that after an article was published exposing the two as domestic partners, and following negative reception of Sulpizio’s outspoken advocacy for the equal treatment of female athletes at Mesa, both Sulpizio and Bass were unlawfully fired.

As a result to NCLR’s claims, the Office for Civil Rights (or OCR) conducted an in-depth investigation of Mesa’s athletic department to analyze its compliance with Title IX, a 1972 education amendment mandating gender equality on college campuses.

On Sept. 10, OCR concluded that Mesa College was in violation of three out of the six claims filed, due to the inequality of Mesa’s provision of locker rooms, practice and competitive facilities, and the provision of training facilities. While most of the offenses were minor, OCR noted that they collectively established a Title IX violation.

OCR found that only female athletes were scheduled for games when they were not allowed to use their own locker rooms.

This claim was in reference to the simultaneous scheduling of a women’s “non- conference” basketball game and a men’s “conference” football game in fall 2007 in which the women athletes were forced to forfeit their locker room and change in the pool bathroom to compensate for the visiting men’s team.

In response to this, Richard Dittbenner, SDCCD’s public information officer, said that under a previous statewide community college system that worked to expand the number of non-conference games, coaches had a shared understanding that the team playing the non-conference game would use the pool facilities to change in. This had nothing to do with gender.

Since the filing of this lawsuit, SDCCD has discontinued this system and no longer allows non-conference games due to the lack of facilities on its campuses.

In regards to inequality in practice and competitive facilities, OCR found that the lack of a properly “skinned” or “turf-less” field created a disadvantage to the women’s softball team.

Dittbenner said that this was an issue that was already being addressed under Mesa’s three-year plan to upgrade various facilities around campus.

Finally, the “first come first serve” basis of the training services at Mesa lead OCR to believe that male athletes were being favored, and therefore created a negative impact against female athletes.

An additional part-time trainer has been added to Mesa’s staff as a solution.

All in all, OCR found Mesa’s treatment of female athletes to be equal and sometimes greater than its treatment of male athletes, although most of the news media is blowing the outcome of the OCR investigation out of proportion.

The majority of news outlets claim that OCR stated they found “substantial and unjustified” Title IX violations at Mesa. However this is not a phrase that can be found in the OCR report of their investigation but rather the press release published by NCLR.

“In the media you’re not going to get a fair interpretation because a ‘minor discrepancy’ is not newsworthy,” Dittbenner said.

It should also be taken into consideration that after the exposure of Sulpizio and Bass as domestic partners, they would be scrutinized under the districts nepotism policy, which prevents any family member or domestic partner from directly supervising another family member.

The Supreme Court trial is still pending. The complaint names Mesa Athletic Director Dave Evans, San Diego Mesa College, and the San Diego Community College District as defendants.

All persons involved in the lawsuit, including Sulpizio and Evans, were unable to comment.