It appears that male athletes at Temple University are the latest casualties of the way Title IX is interpreted.

Title IX was originally a federal effort to guarantee equal opportunities for male and female athletes but has long since become the tool of choice in “a crusade to impose quotas and gender preferences in schools.”

A massive cutback on sports activities has left Temple University in suburban Philadelphia with only about two thirds of its program intact. Temple dropped 7 of its 24 of its intercollegiate athletic programs.

Sure, budgetary concerns and a lackluster season for the football team are factors in this drastic move. But so is ideology:

School officials also cited costs, woeful facilities, and federal regulations requiring female and male athletes to be treated equally as reasons for the elimination of five male sports and two female sports. Collectively, the cuts will save more than $3 million in Temple's $44 million athletic budget, officials said. The cuts will take effect in June 2014, the end of the academic year. …

The university chose to spare women's gymnastics and more women's sports in general in part because of Title IX, a federal regulation which requires equal participation, athletic scholarships, and support for male and female athletes. Temple has been out of compliance for years. It has three percent more male athletes than female but 58 percent of its scholarship money goes to men. Temple's student body is 51 percent female.

"With these changes, we will be in compliance with Title IX," Clark said.

Title IX was passed in 1972 to reiterate an anti-discrimination policy in college athletics. So far, so good.

Female athletes absolutely deserve equal opportunities as their male counterparts on campus. The problem is the way Title IX is applied. As interpreted by bureaucrats, Title IX aims for a quota system, based on enrollment, regardless of whether the same percentage of women as men on campus want to be involved in a athletic program.

The necessity of avoiding costly lawsuits has led colleges and universities to enforce quotas, even though this has frequently been devastating to male athletic programs. We haven’t written about Title IX lately but it’s still something that affects college athletes.