Athletes at Stanford filed a pair of lawsuits against the university on Wednesday in a last-ditch effort to force it to reinstate most of the 11 sports it is axing at the end of the current school year. One suit, filed by eight athletes, is claiming fraud and breach of contract, arguing that Stanford did not disclose to recruits that it was formulating plans to drop the sports, which, the suit said, had been in the works for years. The other suit is asking for an injunction on behalf of five women, arguing that dropping their sports would violate Title IX laws. Stanford said in a statement on Thursday that it was “surprised and disappointed” in the suits. But no university has cut more teams, or drawn more attention, than Stanford, which is declining to dip into its endowment, which was about $29 billion as of March, to finance one of the N.C.A.A.’s most successful broad-based athletic programs.

Source: New York Times May 13, 2021 15:48 UTC