"Market value is based on society's values, and society values men's sports more then women's. I don't think an educational institution should necessarily buy into what society values," she says.

Administrators also stress that men's and women's budgets don't have to be strictly equal for equal opportunities to exist.

"One point of confusion people sometimes have is that unequal dollars spent on men's and women's sports is de facto a sign of inequity," says Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68, chair of the self-study steering committee. "Not true--there is no standard that says that the dollars spent have to be the same, and in fact that would make no sense."

Lewis highlights the example of the costs of mounted police hired for the Harvard-Yale game. Hiring similar police officers for women's games when they are not needed would be wasteful.

"The important thing is that the needs of men's and women's sports are being met to comparable degrees, and we have concluded that that is the case," Lewis says.

Star Search

Despite receiving a B+ overall from the Women's Sports Foundation, the University was awarded a considerably lower C+ for equality in recruiting budgets. The study found that, in '95-'96, the athletic department spent only 20 percent of its recruiting budget on women's athletes.

Lewis says discrepancies in recruiting budgets result from regional differences between sports.

"Some sports are harder to recruit for than others," he says "A sport that is played in only a few states does not need as large a recruiting budget as one that is played nationally."

Despite this, women's sports are beginning to recruit nationally. Women's Hockey Head Coach Kathleen B. Stone notes that women's hockey is no longer centered only in the northeast, as it once was.

"If you're going to do recruiting right, you have to go to Canada, you have to go to Alaska. You have to go wherever they're playing hockey," she says.

Figures show that the athletic department has increased funding for women's recruitment drastically over the last year, from just over $64,000 in 1995-96 to more than $130,000 in 1996-97.

Traditionally, recruiting has also been partly funded through friends groups. These groups were established to allow alumni and other donors to fund extra expenses for specific teams, including out of region travel and supplementary recruiting efforts.

In the past, it was common for alumni to only donate to men's sports through these programs.

"You've got these long established, broad based friends groups for men, and these small, relatively new friends groups for women. We saw that these were not equating," Henry says.