And so the students who have helped Radcliffe plan have been told the Women's Science Alliance will either disband all together or morph into a general science program aimed at men and women.

This legal interpretation of Title IX suits Harvard well because College policy has long prohibited programs open to only one sex anyway. No final clubs, no women's center, administrators have argued for years.

"I believe that equality of opportunity means just that--to the extent that we can achieve it, all our programs should be open to all our students on an equal basis," Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 writes in an e-mail message.

Yet other colleges that are less hostile to single-sex programs don't see Title IX quite the same way.

Some are still reeling from Title IX's implications for athletics, which frequently means schools must pump money into women's sports in order to avoid the appearance of inequity. Still focused on creating equal playing fields, most have not even considered the implications of Title IX for single-sex mentoring and counseling programs.

Furthermore, the rules governing Title IX compliance with respect to academic programs has never been ironed out--only a court can flesh out the law's official interpretation, but no school wants to be the legal guinea pig. As a result, most schools have been wary of instituting single-sex academic programs that could open them up to a legal challenge.

Still, schools with looser interpretations of Title IX exist, and it is those administrators that have decided that single-sex programming serves a higher goal.

The WILL Model