A New Life
The report seems to have given new life to women's athletes and coaches. Coaches, meeting together with athletic administrators, won the right to see copies of the document, which had previously not been available, and got administrators to agree to a series of meetings to discuss Title IX issues.
Some athletes have become Title IX activists, too. Two members of the Radcliffe crew team held a symposium in April with Kleinfelder, Flannery and an official from the Women's Sports Foundation as panelists. Members of the women's crew also criticized The Crimson's sport coverage for what they sai I was a tendency to write more about men's teams.
The athletes closely followed a suit filed against Brown University by members of its women's gymnastics and volleyball teams, which the school cut for a lack of funds. In April, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of the students and ordered Brown to reinstate the teams.
The department's reaction to coaches and players-turned-activists has been grudging. Cleary, in fact, only agreed to the February meeting with coaches on the condition that he be presented with the topics for discussion beforehand. And department administrators declined invitations to speak at the student-organized symposium last month on Title IX.
Administrative Reaction
While University administrators received strong public support from Dean of the Faculty Jeremy Knowles, who oversees the department, the dean indicated in a March interview that more "parity" between men's and women's teams would be an improvement.
Tougher to figure were the varying reactions of President Neil Rudenstine. Immediately after the report was leaked, the president offered a strong defense of the department's compliance with Title IX and indicated he saw little need for change.
But in an April interview. Rudenstine gave an indication that he may seek some sort of reform. He identified the comparatively low participation of women in Harvard athletic as a concern, and said increased funding may be a way a to foster greater participation.
"I'm all for having increased participation rates," Rudenstine said "I think I'd want to know more about the reason for the current situation before we decided how to solve it.
Rudenstine's comments raised the possibility of some sort of University mandated change in participation and funding of women's athletics.
Pressure to Act
In the end, Harvard may be forced to act because of developments outside the University A report released last month by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) said colleges must raise the participation rates of women athletes to mirror the proportion of women among its students and offered a definition of equity.
"An athletes program is gender equitable when either the men's or women's sports program would be pleased to accept as its own the overall program of the other gender," the report says.
There is no word yet on what methods, if any, the NCAA will use to enforce the report.
Title IX cases are pending against dozens of universities, including three Ivy League schools. In addition to the Brown case, the U.S. Department of Education has launched an investigation of Dartmouth's department of athletics in response to a complaint from the school's softball team about being a club sport. Dartmouth's baseball team has full varsity status. Women athletes at the University of Pennsylvania are also awaiting a federal decision on a Title IX-related action.
Court and government rulings could force Harvard to make changes in the way it treats women's programs.
If that should happen, the extent and nature of any changes will be as unpredictable as the outcome of the next Harvard-Yale game.
But some of Harvard's women athletes and coaches say they will never be satisfied with anything less than total equality, right down to the writing on the locker room walls.
"It's not about giving women what they need," Kleinfelder says. "It's about giving them the same."