Last Title IX hearing is 'most contentious'. (Newswatch).

In late November San Diego hosted the last of four public hearings before the Department of Education's Commission on Opportunity in Athletics, charged with reporting to the department by January 31 on whether Title IX encourages gender equity in sports opportunities.

Described as "by far the most contentious," the meeting featured heated exchanges between those who see Title IX as a boon to women in athletics, and critics who claim it is destroying athletic opportunities for males. Here are some of the comments:

* The commission is a fiasco, made up mainly of NCAA Division I ADs who have a "vested interest and a conflict of interest in weakening the law to make it less necessary to do the tough budget decisions that have to be done to comply with Title IX," said Donna Lopiano, executive director of the Women's Sports Foundation.

She said the White House was manipulating the Department of Education to skew the process of the hearings, to get the commission to recommend weakening Title IX. "The proposed use of interest surveys to replace proportionality is preposterous, and it will not stand up in the courts," she said. With six million high school athletes competing for $1 billion in scholarships and another $1 billion in other opportunities, including getting into some elite schools, women are certainly interested, she said.

* Rick Bay, AD at San Diego State University, admitted he cut the men's volleyball team to save $150,000, because the athletic department had a debt of $1.3 million. He refused to cut the school's $5 million football budget because "that would have reduced our ability to be competitive" in football.

* Actor Geena Davis urged commissioners to support Title IX. An amateur archer who competed in Olympic trials, she came to athletics later in life. Surveys of interests in athletics, which OCR chief Gerald Reynolds backs as a way for schools to comply with Title IX, would not have helped her discover latent abilities and interests.

"I am here to take you for a ride in Thelma and Louise's car, if you think it's right to limit a girl's opportunity in sports based on her answer to a survey," she said. Davis referred to the final scene in her 1991 movie classic, in which the women drive off a cliff in frustration after males had trapped them at every turn.