The Kansas State High School Activities Association has taken a positive step by adopting a specific anti-discrimination policy for its affiliated schools.

The policy, which will go into effect for the 2008-09 school year, bars schools from taking “any action to prevent an athletic official from officiating a contest because of the official’s race, sex, religion or national origin.” The standard would apply both to members of KSHSAA and to “approved” schools that are allowed to freely compete against teams from KSHSAA member schools.

In this age of equity, such a standard shouldn’t even need to be spelled out, but an incident earlier this year at St. Mary’s Academy near Topeka made it clear that the policy was necessary. Officials at St. Mary’s refused to allow a female referee to officiate a boys basketball game simply because she was a woman. The excuse they offered was that a male referee was needed because the “formation of adolescent boys is best accomplished by male role models.”

Many people, including the female referee’s male colleagues, were outraged by the action. Despite state and federal laws that prohibit discriminatory employment practices, St. Mary’s, as a private school, may have some latitude to set its own policies. However, that doesn’t mean the KSHSAA has to accept such discriminatory behavior by an “approved” school, which St. Mary’s was at the time. It will, of course, be the school’s choice whether to accept the KSHSAA policy or withdraw from competition with the association’s approved and member schools.

In an interesting bit of turnabout, St. Mary’s rector cited potential discrimination when he outlined the school’s position in letters that were obtained by an area newspaper through an open records request. The rector referred to “our beliefs and school policy” and noted that “A ‘disqualification’ of our school’s participation in the KSHSAA would certainly seem discriminatory.”

St. Mary’s may be entirely sincere in its world view, but if the KSHSAA accepts the school’s reasoning, it would open the door to accepting all kinds of discriminatory behavior on the part of its members and approved schools. If a school can project sexist policies on KSHSAA activities there is no reason it also couldn’t use its “beliefs” to justify the rejection of an official because he or she was black or of a religious faith that the school found objectionable.

That’s just not acceptable to an organization promoting healthy competition and activities among Kansas high school youngsters, and the KSHSAA has sent the right message by adopting its new policy.