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Originally posted by drothamel
How are the conferences determined in IL? I mean, is it largely goegraphic, like here? I am assuming that these schools are all public schools. If that is is the case, then I would imagine that the racial make-up of the schools is determined by the surrounding population.
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Conferences are determined by the schools and the sports they play. I do know the IHSA only recognizes conferences that have a certain number of schools involved. Of course geography is a factor, but it is not the only factor. There are many conferences that are spread out over several miles. I work for one conference where it is not totally unusual for you to travel 60 miles between schools. The HS I graduated from we had a good trip to play most of the schools in our conference. So the racial makeup is not as easily determined by the schools in a conference.
Quote:
Originally posted by drothamel
And since this obviously relates to officiating, how are the officials assigned to these schools? Do the schools choose the officials, or is there an association that does the assigning for them? If the schools do the assigning, I would shutter to think that they would choose their officials based on race.
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Neither. In the Chicago area conferences hire an assignor. These individuals are not hired to be associated with a group or organization. The assignor makes the determination on who works the games and I know the school might make some requests to have racially balanced officials on games especially when some of the schools playing are racially diverse.
I think what needs to be made clear, the SICA conference is a 30+ team conference. All these schools are in the Southern Suburbs of Chicago. The south suburbs tend to be a very racially diverse area. Many towns jammed next to each other. You go down one street and you can go to a wealthy area and in a couple of minutes run into an area of poverty and more crime problems. The schools that are separating are mostly schools with higher income families that live there. Maybe to a surprise to many, there are a couple of schools that have a really high African-American population in some of the schools. Most of the schools breaking away from the SICA conference are almost entirely white. The issue that this article was mainly dealing with is that there are a clump of schools that are entirely Black for the most part and they were feeling they were excluded in the new alignment. The conference claimed the new alignment had nothing to do with race, but it seemed to come out that way whether it was on purpose or not. This caused a lot of animosity and this is the reason the Illinois Attorney General was about to get involved.
I saw in the paper where this new South West Suburban Conference was asking for assignors in several sports. I guess we will see how this is going to play out in the coming months.
Peace