Mike Machnik writes:
 
  I also wonder, how far does it have to go?  I seem to recall that
  Colgate had/has a women's club team, but that wasn't enough for the
  plaintiffs who wanted a varsity team.  Will all schools with men's
  varsities and women's club teams be forced to push those programs to
  varsity level?  Some of the schools I can think of who might be
  affected by this in the East are BU, BC, Maine, and RPI.  Will any
  schools be forced to drop their men's programs because they cannot
  afford to have both?
 
I have wondered for a long time how this ruling would affect schools
like RPI.  As many of you know, RPI, as most (all?) engineering
schools, is predominantly male.  Although "the ratio" is not nearly the
50-1 that it was when I was in my class ('68), there are still many
more men than women at the school.  It would seem that a fairer
solution would be that the athletic programs should be in line with the
ratio of men-to-women on the campus.
 
RPI does now have a women's club Hockey team, but I have no idea if
there is any talk of turning it into a varsity team, and if so would it
be Div-I as the men's Hockey team or Div-III as all the rest of the
varsity teams?  It has surprised me that RPI has not chosen to turn its
women's Hockey program into a varsity team since it fields women's
teams in many other sports--probably more than the student ratio would
demand.  Perhaps the problem is that there is an unknown-to-me NC$$
rule that would require the team to be Div-I in line with the men's
team and not Div-III like the rest of the teams and this would be
prohibitively expensive.
 
Hopefully, as Mike mentioned, the end result for Colgate and also for
RPI won't be that they will be forced to drop their men's teams.  I
suspect that in at least RPI's case this would not happen because
supposedly the men's team is a money-maker for the school.  (Does
anyone know if it really is?)