Title IX

What Women Want: "With its new guidance, the Department of Education is finally trying to let schools use the commonsense solution, enabling them to comply with Title IX by e-mailing a survey to all students asking them about their interest in participating in intercollegiate athletics, and judging schools by how closely what they offer matches what women want. It makes sense. So what's the problem?

Like a home crowd whose team just had a touchdown called back, Title IX's proponents pounced on the department's new rules. In an Inside Higher Ed commentary the other week, for instance, Nancy Hogshead-Makar, an Olympic gold-medal swimmer and an assistant professor at Florida Coastal School of Law, and Donna Lopiano, executive director of the Women's Sports Foundation, ripped into the new guidance, saying the department is 'thumbing its nose at the law and the female athletes it is charged with protecting.'"