The Terp Behind Title IX

UMD coaches and athletes reflect on legacy of Bernice Sandler Ed.D. ’69, who spearheaded the groundbreaking legislation that transformed women’s sports

The Spring 2022 issue of ONE MARYLAND Magazine has arrived in the mailboxes of Terrapin Club members soon, but this is a sneak peak of one of its stories. 

ONE MARYLAND features stories of strength and perseverance, of determination and spirit. These stories define our athletics program, and this new magazine will allow us to share these stories with you. 

To receive future issues of the magazine when they debut, please join the Terrapin Club. We hope you enjoy.

Growing up with six brothers in West Virginia, Vicky Bullett ’89 remembers her dad telling her, “Work hard in school, Vick, because we can’t afford to send you to college.”

She followed his advice, but it was on the basketball court where she really shone. Bullett earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Maryland as a scholarship student-athlete while becoming one of the Terp women’s basketball team’s most decorated players. She won gold at the 1988 Olympics, competed in Europe and the WNBA, and later coached college basketball.

“Who knows where I’d be if I didn’t have the opportunity to get a scholarship?” says Bullett. 

She has a fellow Terp to thank for that: the late Bernice “Bunny” Sandler Ed.D. ’69, who was spurred by gender discrimination to launch a nationwide battle to create and pass the landmark civil rights law formally known as Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972. She defended it and advocated for its enforcement for decades, opening doors for millions of girls and women to achieve athletic, educational and professional equality. 

“I’m grateful for [Sandler] and all the pioneers who have come before me,” Bullett says. “She created the platform, and now so many young ladies are continuing to make things better for the next generation.”

"On the Basis of Sex"

While a co-ed in the 1920s could pick up a tennis racket or don a pair of bloomers to shoot hoops, she was encouraged to do so for recreation, not competition. Any matches were primarily between classes, such as juniors playing sophomores, and teams didn’t have funding to hire coaches, so seniors led their peers.

That was the same world Dorothy “Dottie” McKnight saw decades later, when she came to UMD in 1964 as assistant professor of physical education.  

“I loved to coach, so I stepped up. We met with other schools once a year to set up a playing schedule, very informally,” says McKnight, who led the field hockey and women’s lacrosse and basketball teams until 1976, but notes she was never paid for coaching. Over the years, “it was such a battle for me to even get a state car to take our players to a game.”

On the academic side, women such as Sandler faced their own struggles. They were expected to enter traditionally female fields like K-12 teaching and nursing; they were barred from more lucrative, typically male domains like engineering or business. Even when they earned degrees, few companies were willing to hire women, Sandler discovered. 

When she finished her doctorate at the College of Education, she sought one of seven open full-time faculty positions there. Though she was well qualified, a male faculty member told her, “You come on too strong for a woman.” The rejections kept coming as she pursued other jobs. One interviewer said she was “just a housewife who went back to school.” Another said he couldn’t hire her because women stayed home when their children were sick.

“Knowing that sex discrimination was immoral, I assumed it would also be illegal,” Sandler wrote in 1997. But she could find only a little-known executive order, which wasn’t being enforced, to support her cause. She rallied members of Congress to her cause and made that directive the foundation of legislation she shaped to explicitly prohibit sex discrimination in employment and education, and joined the Women’s Equity Action League as it filed a class-action lawsuit against universities across the country. 

On June 23, 1972, President Richard Nixon signed Title IX into law. It states, in part: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”

The Legacy of Title IX 

Today, UMD is a national powerhouse in women’s sports. The perennially top-20 ranked basketball team won the NCAA tournament in 2006, and the lacrosse and field hockey teams have racked up a combined 21 national titles, including the 2019 lacrosse NCAA championship. 

That’s due in part to a steady pipeline of girls pursuing high school sports after Title IX—now 10 times greater than in 1972, according to the National Center for Education Statistics—which has led to women making up nearly half of all NCAA Division I athletes.

Field hockey’s Missy Meharg M.A. ’90, the university’s winningest coach, recalls not being allowed to pursue ice hockey as a girl in the 1970s. But today, her players have gone on to become entrepreneurs, doctors and professional athletes, and she’s excited about the soon to be expanded field hockey-lacrosse team house and stadium. “Maryland doesn’t just meet the numbers for women’s sports—we’re thriving and leading every day,” she says. 

It’s not just those who turn pro who reap the benefits of athletics. “The lessons you gain on the field of play, you’ll take with you for the rest of your life,” says former ESPN and CBS reporter Bonnie Bernstein ’92, a Terp gymnast, pointing to an Ernst-Young study showing more than 94% of women in C-suite positions played sports. “Teamwork, accountability, time management—you can parlay those into professional success.”

There’s still work to be done: high school girls, especially girls of color, still drop out of sports at a higher rate than boys. Men’s sports still get more press coverage and scholarship dollars. And just last year, a viral Instagram post revealed dramatically unequal weight room set-ups for women and men playing in the NCAA basketball tournament. 

The next generation will have to continue the fight, says Bullett. Now the athletic director for the Boys and Girls Club in her hometown, she frequently talks about the law that changed her life. 

“Working with young kids every day, I share with them what I’ve achieved, and tell them how Title IX gives you those opportunities. Knowledge is power,” she says.

Editor’s Note: This article is adapted from the Spring 2022 edition of Terp Magazine.