On Jan. 18 Vanderbilt University reached a settlement with seven current and former members of the women’s track and field and cross-country teams claiming Title IX discrimination. In the settlement, stemming from a May 2001 lawsuit, Vanderbilt agreed to the reconstruction of the track and field facilities and an addition to the full-time coaching staff.

Title IX was created to ensure equality in all aspects of schooling for males and females. Fighting for pregnant mothers’ rights, equivalent educator’s salaries and lower dropout rates, Title IX seems to have accomplished its goals in the classroom.

In the gyms and on the playing fields, it has also advanced women’s athletics to the levels we enjoy today. If not for the amendment, the ISU women’s basketball team would not be playing in Hilton. It has truly given women the opportunities they need and deserve.

In spite all of the good Title IX has brought to athletics, it is beginning to show its flaws.

Since 1972 there have been numerous claims and whispered rumors that low-profile men’s sports have suffered as a result of schools complying with the Title IX ruling.

Under Title IX, universities must offer the same number of scholarships to men’s and women’s sports.

Sounds reasonable, if not fair.

But when 85 scholarships are pulled out of the men’s pool for a revenue-generating sport such as football the scales becomes severely lopsided, and this is where low-profile men’s sports begin to suffer and new issues of equality start to arise.

Schools are allowed to meet Title IX’s equality standards for female athletes in a variety of ways: by proving opportunities for female athletes “substantially proportionate” to their enrollment, that opportunities match the level of students’ interest in any given sport, or the addition of new teams.

In 1996 a clarification of those rules said schools would count actual athletes and not spots allotted to teams.

A suit financed by the National Wrestling Coaches Association against the Education Department contends that as a result of those rules many schools choose to trim men’s sports, not add women’s teams, as the only way to achieve the equality Title IX requires. This is especially true in times of budget crisis.

So what should be done with an antiquated law that seems to have extended past its original station creating the very situation it was supposed to eliminate?

Some would like to see Title IX gone for good; others have sought to change the amendment to infuse more flexibility into a valuable law.

In 1974, the “Tower Amendment” had the foresight to ask that revenue-producing sports be exempt from the tabulation process when determining Title IX compliance. It was never put into law. Perhaps a more viable option would be to eliminate “the beast” from the equation – football. After all, the football roster eats up a disproportionate number of scholarships for males, and not counting football scholarships would seemingly even the playing field between men and women.

There is no women’s sport with anywhere near the player base football has; thus, by taking away “the beast,” the low-profile sports, following a revised Title IX, will be forced to work toward the equality Title IX was put in place to provide at its inception.

editorialboard: Andrea Hauser, Tim Paluch, Michelle Kann, Zach Calef, Omar Tesdell, Charlie Weaver