So in the early '80s, beginning with men and women's crew, the athletic department has been in the process of combining friends groups for individual sports.

"We've revitalized that effort over the last three or four years," Henry says.

The recently released self-study found that the merging of friends groups will increase fundraising efforts, eventually to the point where these groups will pay for all extra-budgetary expenses for women's teams, as they now do for men's.

But in the mean time, in order to make up for the funds men's teams received from donations, the Harvard Radcliffe Foundation for women's Athletics (HRFWA) was also established in 1981. Today, HRFWA still allocates approximately $40,000 a year solely for women's athletics.

Despite the merging of the friends groups, in some sports it is still possible to earmark funds solely for a men's sport.

A Head Start

According to Stone, Harvard has long been thought a leader in gender equity.

"I think the awareness of Title IX has been sort of a hanging cloud at times," says Stone. "It's been a threat to a lot of athletic departments, but the Harvard athletic department has taken it upon itself to be proactive, to do things before anyone has said they had to."

Harvard athletics has issued reports on women's status within the department every two years since 1976.

"I don't know of any other school that has looked at itself in that sort of measuring way over the past 22 years," Henry says.

Henry says that in the early '80s administrators from other universities would call frequently to ask how Harvard had organized the report.

In addition, Harvard was the first school in the Ivy League to offer women's lightweight crew. The sport is currently being added to athletic departments across the nation in order to increase numbers of women athletes.

"We just looked around our campus, and noticed most of the women here were in the lightweight category," Henry says. "It was totally common sense. Now everyone's waking up to it."

And although some coaches say that monetary inequities do exist, their teams are receiving the money they need.

"I've never been told no," says Susan E. Caples, head coach of the women's field hockey team. "When there are things we've needed to do, we've done what we needed to do."