In the past eight years, I have gone from the presidency of a university known around the world for its prominent athletic program (particularly its men's football), to that of an Ivy League university which kept sports at a somewhat less prominent level, to the chancellorship of Vanderbilt University, where athletics falls somewhere between the two extremes. Each of these three universities belongs to a different conference, each of which has its own rules about how to conduct an athletic program, but they have all been touched by Title IX in their policies and in their procedures. The Scholar & Feminist Online has graciously requested that I contribute to their issue on women, sports, and cultural values, based on my experience in higher education administration, and particularly on my experience with restructuring Vanderbilt's athletics program. I am honored to accept their invitation. Please allow me to give you some background on Title IX, before I suggest to you that it does not do enough or go far enough to advance the cause of women in intercollegiate athletics programs.

Title IX has helped more women advance in sports than any other program. But despite the fact that the idea and the theory of it sound like the most uncontroversial topics one could imagine, Title IX has had a complicated history of producing more strong feelings and press coverage about colleges and universities than any other federal policy outside of affirmative action. This comes as no surprise to me, as I am thoroughly aware, through my own experience with public policy, that any time a new federal policy arises that would change the way things have always been done, some people will resist in fear or misunderstanding, just as some will continue to fight for what they know in their hearts is right. And add to the history of Title IX the fact that sports always raises strong, almost tribal feelings, and you are looking at a situation that is sure to prove difficult. I know, personally and professionally, the power college athletics holds over human emotions, what a strong force they are in our culture and particularly on our campuses.

College athletics are the one way that many people come into contact with institutions of higher education, primarily through broadcast media and through merchandising. And the opinion people develop about college athletics colors their opinion of higher education in general: some see the unity and spirit aroused by athletic contests, while others see the corruption of our academic communities, or worse, come to the conclusion that our academic community is really only another commercial enterprise, as steeped in cynicism as any other. The public perception of college athletics would seem to be a force difficult for administrators to control.

A university's athletic program directly affects an institution's bottom line, especially through its impact on alumni relations and on the quality and quantity of media coverage a college or university receives. Athletics influences admissions at every university in this country. And at some schools, the preferential or differential treatment given to athletes is a source of controversy that carries with it the tone of class unrest. Athletes are scrutinized for their behavior both on and off the playing field. The rates of graduation of varsity athletes are monitored by media and by watchdog groups. Sports even manage to affect the relationship a university has to the town surrounding it! At every alumni club I visit, the subject of athletics comes up. After every less-than-stellar football game, I receive ferocious e-mails and telephone calls.

In these heated conditions, Title IX has to operate. And even Title IX itself can become a symbol for other strongly held emotions and positions. For its supporters, Title IX was the long-awaited opening that finally allowed women to receive some of the benefits and riches of college athletics. It was the means that brought women more fully into the area of higher education that had been most resistant to claims of equality. It was seen by many to help women compete more brilliantly in the Olympics, and stood for fairness and expanded opportunity in college athletics. It was a long-overdue check on the corruption associated with big-time college sports, a way to open up the cigar-smoky back rooms of athletic departments, where riches and benefits are distributed. It was about reforming a world in desperate need of change and renewal. It was the one force able to withstand the appeal and power of the big-time football programs.

But of course there have always been opposite interpretations: that Title IX was another interference of the federal government in the internal decisions of colleges and universities; that Title IX was only about cutting men's teams; that it represents a culture of litigation, taking athletic policy out of the athletic director's office and into the courtroom. Title IX invites courts right into college athletics and university finances, realms far outside their traditional areas of competence, comfort, and expertise. Courts are being called on to oversee the budget-making processes of universities, and to oversee all areas of college athletics for the long term.

As you can see, just as everything about athletics seems to arouse strong feelings, so too did - and does - this particular piece of federally enacted public policy.

Sometimes, people seem more eager to shout about Title IX than to understand what it is and how it operates. Strong misconceptions about college athletics have clouded understanding of what Title IX is and what it can actually do. So before one can begin a sensitive and well-informed discussion of Title IX's policy implications, some basic facts need to be considered.

Fact Number One: Football does not "pay for" women's sports at most of the institutions belonging to the NCAA. Most Division I-A football programs run substantial yearly deficits and cannot even pay for themselves, let alone fifty percent of a university's athletic program.

Fact Number Two: In "Fact Number One" above, you can take out the word "Football" and insert the words "men's basketball," and the statement will still be true.

Fact Number Three: Nearly every college athletic program in this country is a subsidized program.

Fact Number Four: When a university cuts programs to balance its budget, athletic programs are usually among the last to be cut. The suspicion that administrators look for any excuse to cut athletic programs is without foundation. Most administrators see the energy and excitement sports programs bring to a campus as benefits too dear to lose.

It seems that not everyone is aware of these facts. Most of the popularly conceived "problems" that critics of Title IX find with the measure are based on outrageous (by which I do mean outrage-inducing) fantasy, while the more critical (and actual) problems that surround Title IX get overlooked - or do not even enter the imagination.

One of the first controversies over Title IX to emerge in higher-education circles had to do with the notion of institutional autonomy - for although schools might have agreed strongly with the policy of expanding opportunities for women in sports, many were concerned about judicial interference and felt that they alone should decide what their policies should be. Sometimes, they would discover that compliance with Title IX actually required less representation of the female population than their athletics program had already achieved and would wonder why they were not being allowed to regulate themselves.

In 1972, when Title IX was passed by Congress, opportunities for women to compete in college sports were woefully inadequate, and their programs were seriously and shamefully underfinanced in budgets weighted heavily toward men's sports. Whether a school had long been coeducational or whether it had only recently admitted women did not make a difference. The world of college sports had to be altered dramatically to allow for women to participate on equal terms. However, when studying a policy - especially one as fraught as Title IX - one needs to look not just at the policy's intent, but also at the means chosen to bring about the desired change. We can all accept the principles behind Title IX, but we must also examine the means that have developed in order to promote the policy.

By any measure, Title IX shifted the landscape of women's sports in this country for the better. American women are now a dominant force in international competition. NCAA championship teams in women's basketball and soccer now fill the headlines in sports pages and draw the crowds and revenues that follow popularity. Nearly every athletic director in the country mentions the success of women's teams as much as men's. Title IX was largely responsible for this shift in the culture.

So, given the success of Title IX, and given the nobility of its ends, why does the mention of it still cause controversy and consternation? Perhaps Title IX was not a measure sufficient in itself to bring about all the changes it was intended to effect. I do hope that you can hear my critical thought about the measure as something new, and as something based on my own experience, instead of on a reactive misapprehension, because my problem is not with Title IX in itself, but rather with how it lets us off the hook. My reservations are concerned with the fact that Title IX can appear to be sufficient reform: because they think a problem has been solved for them, university administrators feel permitted to turn their attention to other issues. "We don't have to attend to bringing equality to our university athletic culture; we have Title IX!" This seems like a line of dialogue from a bad dream, but it can be closer to the truth than we would like to think.

Title IX does not exactly inspire innovative thought. The essential tool set up by it is threatening and punitive: fail to comply with Title IX, and certain federal funding for your campus is cut off. (Quite effective, when one considers there is no better way to bring change on a campus than to threaten the withdrawal of funds!)

Because Title IX relies on courts for enforcement, undergraduate athletes and university administrators with different ideas about what athletics programs should do, can be compelled to enter into lawsuits, and into an adversarial system. Courts operate according to adversarial principles, one side pitted against the other, both forced to adhere to certain rules of evidence and court procedure. In a court case, the two sides often find themselves adopting certain positions that reflect not their beliefs or motives but only a specialized and stylized legal strategy. People with an interest in shaping the course of sports on their campuses are transformed into potential litigants; this aspect of Title IX has had a negative effect on college campuses, as participation in sports has come to be regarded as a right to be fought over rather than as an opportunity to be pursued.

Allow me to admit that, as a university president, I strongly dislike this adversarial model. I do not want students to think first of filing a lawsuit before it occurs to them to work with administrators for change. I am not certain that is the best way to run an athletic department, let alone a university! I have always been concerned that Title IX sets up a mood of contention and gives rise to the idea that we are perpetually divided by our vested interests instead of united by our common goals. Sports, which can be a unifying and vivifying force on college campuses, become a legal battleground, and Title IX, which was created as a means to multiply the benefits of sports for all, becomes an instrument of ill-will. I suspect that from this mentality comes the idea that women's and men's sports are opposed to each other, and that any gains women achieve come somehow at the expense of men, because the adversarial model only allows for the gains of the one being at the cost of another.

But, since I have voiced those concerns, please allow me to say what I wish, as something of an idealist, I did not have to say: that Title IX was (and remains) an absolute necessity because it provoked change that otherwise would have occurred at a glacial pace, or not at all. Such a dramatic threat from the outside was necessary to prompt change in those athletics programs where the dominant male sports culture was so entrenched and self-protective that only a strong statement from the federal government would bring change. One could argue that the shifts in culture would eventually have carried that change, but how long would we have had to wait for that? And how can we know that all of those shifts in culture that we would have had to count on would have occurred without Title IX in the mix in the first place?

Sadly, I have to admit that even the best efforts of most administrators are not enough to account for and monitor noncompliance. In our present non-utopian state of affairs, Title IX is absolutely necessary to check egregious cases of unfair treatment that occur as a result of budgeting decisions that may or may not be politically driven. Realistically, Title IX suits and claims in some form will probably always continue to serve a useful purpose. And sometimes, dislike it though I do, the adversarial model is necessary as the last resort of those for whom negotiation has already failed, and who lack the power to stand up to an entire institution on their own.

Ultimately, my concerns about judicial interference have less to do with Title IX itself than with the lack of a sense of responsibility among some college administrators and athletics programs. Our role as leaders is to make things right before they go wrong, or to eliminate the possibility of wrong occurring, to create and maintain a culture where measures for equality would be too integral to our daily operations to be thought of as controversial. After all, we are to strive to run our colleges according to the humane ideals of higher education. We are to put our students first, treating them with the respect, regard, and dignity they deserve as human beings searching out a path in life.

When we incorporated the athletics program at Vanderbilt into the Division of Student Life, we did so in order that the operations of our athletic program would always be in alignment with our mission and goals as a University. We did so in order that athletes would be seen as fully rounded scholars, as students instead of as pre-professional athletes who, we assume, do not really want a diploma anyway. We wanted to make certain that our student-athletes take real classes, that they attend those classes, that their grades stay healthy, and that they graduate. We made changes in order to encourage our student-athletes to be successful in all facets of campus life, cultural and social and not just athletic. And because Vanderbilt is in every way an equal-opportunity University, we made sure that athletes would always be treated according to our humane mission and that their treatment would arise from the central-most heart of University operations, thus opening opportunities to all of our athletes yet again.

When Vanderbilt made the decision to rework our operations, our decision originated from within the institution. It was not externally invented or imposed; it evolved here out of our truest values. The change belonged - and belongs - to us. It is now part of our self-definition. And because we created our own change, the change "took."

So I would encourage my peers in higher education to take their own initiative to promote women's sports, instead of assuming that Title IX will do all the work for them. We cannot take refuge in a litigation-based approach. We cannot make policy simply out of trying to avoid litigation! Outcomes of excellence will never result from doing the minimum amount required, from putting in only the least possible care or effort. Excellence arises from crafting policies in the best interests of our students. Positive cooperation and assertive good faith will always produce better results than contentious battles.

Change may originate from the outside, from Congress and from the courts, but reform that endures, and that alters not just foreground appearance but background assumption as well, must come from consensus and conciliation within an institution. Change should be based not solely on fear and recrimination or legal requirement, but on a desire to do what is right. I firmly believe that true change comes not from an external push, but from real leadership within an institution.

Title IX applies to well over three thousand institutions of higher education in this country, each one with its own traditions, its own shortcomings, its own strengths and priorities and goals. Each one will have its own way of determining how it can most truly serve the cause of equality. Title IX is a policy initiative that must operate in a world that is complex and always changing. The responsibility for the direction and quality of that change lies with us. Title IX does work. But for it to work optimally, it requires reform from within institutions. We must continue to improve the culture of intercollegiate athletics so that the threat of punitive measures becomes unnecessary and Title IX ultimately becomes obsolete.

Every reform I have ever gotten credit for making in college athletics I did out of one sole motivation, the only motivation that counts: I care about students. I care about what happens to them, and I want to see that they are given the best possible opportunity to excel as human beings. Any university or college that values students according to their economic desirability and perceived profitability has lost its mooring as an institution of higher education and has sacrificed its authority to teach on any humane subject. We are, and always should be, institutions devoted to students, students of all races and of all genders. They are where our treasure lives; they are our life.