Online Edition | Washington State University | Pullman, Washington | Friday, January 19, 2001

Durrant named first Smith Leadership Award
winner for pioneering efforts in gender equity
By Nella Letizia

Ironing boards in women’s dormitories; recreation equipment in men’s. It’s a quick blip in the recounting of the decade when Sue Durrant and other WSU coaches and student athletes launched an athletic equity suit against WSU. This image can be grasped where years of standing up repeatedly to an unequal system might not.

Durrant, WSU head coach for women’s volleyball from 1962-75 and for women’s basketball from 1971-82, knew of the inequities first hand. She also served on university committees dealing with the issues when Title IX passed in 1972, the landmark legislation that bans sex discrimination in schools, whether in academics or athletics. But by the late 1970s, athletics became the most contentious battleground. WSU students and coaches filed complaints, frustrated that WSU wasn’t meeting the spirit of the national law. In 1978, the students and coaches contacted the Northwest Women’s Law Center about filing a lawsuit. That wasn’t a surprise.

The surprise came when lawyers approached Durrant to be spokesperson for the coaches. Thus, Durrant became one of the lead plaintiffs in Blair v. WSU.

“I didn’t volunteer, but I agreed,” Durrant says on the 12th day of 2001, whole lifetimes after her work on the suit. “Being called to leadership means sometimes not volunteering. Sometimes, you have to take a stand.”

For taking that stand, and for her lifetime of other pioneering efforts in education and athletics, Durrant was named the first recipient of the Samuel H. Smith Leadership Award, given by the Association for Faculty Women Dec. 14.

The award was established by AFW in recognition of Smith’s efforts to promote the role of women at WSU. It is presented annually to an AFW member who has a strong record of leadership in advancing the role of women on campus, or in leadership at the community, state or national level in private, government or professional organizations.

Durrant, AFW’s president in 1986-87, fits nearly all the award’s eligibilities, most especially in terms of the equity suit. Blair v. WSU was the first Title IX case at the state level that went to trial, she explains. The court in 1982 found for the female athletes and coaches of WSU’s women’s teams. Still later, in 1985, Durrant and the other plaintiffs appealed the exclusion of football in the trial court’s decision. The Washington State Supreme Court sided with the students and coaches in 1987—football is to be included in gender equity evaluation.

“This stands as a legal precedent and is still used in Title IX reviews throughout the country,” according to Durrant’s award nominators, KNona Liddell, Engineering and Architecture, and Jo Washburn and Mimi Wolverton, Education. “These decisions set the stage for substantial growth and increased recognition of women’s athletic programs at WSU and are regarded nationally as a cornerstone of equity for women in athletics.”

Other milestones would follow. In 1989, the first Gender Equity in Higher Education legislation was passed by the Washington State Legislature. In 1997, legislation was introduced to establish Sue Durrant Athletic Achievement Awards for young female athletes. That same year, Durrant was an invited guest at Gov. Gary Locke’s signing of the permanent Gender Equity in Higher Education legislation. At the signing ceremony, she was honored for her contributions to gender equity in sport. Her nominators also cite her most recent achievement—representing the National Association for Girls and Women in Sport as a guest of the White House to honor women’s professional basketball.

Durrant started breaking trails for women when she joined the WSU faculty in 1962, a time when there were very few women on the faculty, she recalls. She was active on the Commission on the Status of Women, the organization that in 1976 submitted proposals for the Women Studies Program and Office of Programs for Women, later the Women’s Resource Center. In 1983, Durrant was the first WSU delegate to the Bryn Mawr Institute for Women in Higher Education Administration.

The associate professor in the College of Education’s Sport Management Program also represented WSU faculty as legislative representative in Olympia (1986-89) and served as chair on the Washington Council of Faculty Representatives (1990-92).

Durrant speaks proudly of her groundbreaking equity work but admits it took a toll in extreme burnout. Her career also suffered from its heavy emphasis on advocacy rather than publication. She half jokes that she’ll never make full professor.

“(But) if you don’t (act), what kind of role model do you serve for women student athletes?” she says. “I’m pleased about what was done here. I’m pleased that women athletes are treated with better regard and that women coaches have better resources and salaries.”

Receiving the Smith award has special meaning as well because of the former WSU president’s own efforts to change the climate for women at WSU, Durrant says. On Smith’s arrival in 1985, many still looked at equity accommodations as something “we have to do for women,” and attitudes were still negative.

“Smith tried to change those attitudes and make positive changes through his initiatives,” she said. “President Smith exemplified a willingness to work in positive directions. He was vigilant in trying to be inclusive and to find ways to sensitize people.”