Things have gotten heated and personal in the discussion on Title IX during the fourth and final public Town Hall meeting of the Commission on Opportunities in Athletics.    The topic of discussion is Title IX for the 15-member commission, led by co-chairs Ted Leland, athletic director at Stanford and Cynthia Cooper, former professional basketball player and coach. This traveling road show, which started in the East in Atlanta, moved to the heartland in Chicago and passed through the Rockies in Colorado Springs, landed on the West Coast in sunny San Diego. A total of 10 of the 15 commissioners were on hand for the meeting today.    There were three panels of experts and sports professionals who testified to the Commission, each seeking to provide some convincing insight that might help the commissioners to write their final report, which is due in January. With those seeking change seemingly making progress in the first three hearings, the San Diego session provided those fighting to keep the status quo one final shot at making their case.    Those attending in the audience in this meeting were decidedly female, a marked change from some of the previous hearings. As the first panel reported to the commission, the room became filled with young women wearing blue t-shirts with "Save Title IX" on the front and the number 9 on the back. The audience cheered those who supported keeping the status quo time and time again.    The third set of panelists provided the most controversy and included some of the biggest names in the Title IX debate, including Dr. Donna Lopiano, the executive director of the Women's Sports Foundation, as well as Kimberly Schuld, the former director of Gender Equity and Title IX projects for the Independent Women's Forum. Schuld now works for the federal government on other matters, but remains an expert on the topic.    Lopiano is the leading voice for maintaining the status quo, directing an organization that considers Title IX its most important issue. Schuld, during her tenure with the IWF, was the leading national voice opposing proportionality, and helped define the debate that this commission was formed to address. Lopiano was able to speak first.    Lopiano quickly asked the commission to make no changes in the enforcement of the law. "The previously advantaged male athletes will not be happy for losing their advantaged status. They want you to fix it. They want you to make their schools change their decisions."    After claiming that schools will not change their decision, Lopiano contended that the only thing the commission could do for these men is "weaken" the law. "If you do that, you will place the previously advantaged population in a position to continue to be advantaged."    Lopiano called interest studies "prepostourous," "culturally biased" and "invalid." She challenged the claim that boys are more interested than girls in college sports. She asked the commission to reaffirm its commitment to Title IX, demand better enforcement of the law, better educate schools about prongs two and three, and do everything it can to cause colleges to cap expenditures.    Schuld followed, and scrapped her prepared statement to talk about the testimony she heard during the morning. "I hear people say don't cut Title IX," she said. "Nobody in my four years on this issue, and in the work of this commission have suggested that."    She reminded the commission that it was working on reviewing the law's policies, a policy written by bureaucrats without "a great deal of thoughtful analysis."  She asked the commission to consider "demonstrated interest" in their review of discrimination. She also asked the group to consider the Athletic Director "on the ground" in coming to common sense recommendations on how to move forward.    "I don't see anything in the policy that allows them to be flexible or be creative," said Schuld. "It leads schools to artificially manufacture opportunity."    Asking the commission to look forward, not back, Schuld contended that as enforced "Title IX depresses the growth of women's athletics." She attacked the current enforcement of the law as being destructive. "Everything in the 1996 clarification was designed to bring men down to the level where women are at."    The first question to the third panel ignited a firestorm of emotion. Commissioner Tom Griffith, who works for BYU, read a statement from Lopiano in yesterday's Baltimore Sun, where she said that the commission hearings are a "fiasco," that it is a "setup," and that if she were a commissioner, she "would quit" because of her integrity. He asked her if she said that and if she meant it.    Lopiano defended her statement completely. She noted that the majority of the commissioners were from Div. I-A programs and that would have a "conflict of interest" that leads them to "weaken the law." She also questioned the commission staff on its selection of panelists and its use of data. "What has happened so far, you should not be proud," she answered.    Griffith fired back that he had integrity in his public and private life, and that "my integrity is very important to me. I bitterly resent your inference that my integrity is compromised." He said that he was serving because he was asked to by the government. "The only reason we are here is that we care about the issue. Reasonable and good people can differ on things."    Griffith asked Lopiano to take back her statements from the Baltimore Sun, which she refused to do. She said that she was "questioning the integrity of the process," but was unable to finish the argument when co-chair Cooper cut it off and asked people to move onto other issues."    The sparring continued during the other questions, when fellow panelist Sam Bell, the president of the U.S. College Track Coaches Association noted the position of radical women's groups, and said "Donna is one of them." He noted that things have "gotten out of hand" and that the pendulum has swung too far and must "come back to center."    When asked by Commissioner Debbie Yow about the idea of not counting walkons, Lopiano would not budge from her support for the current regulations. "The last thing as an administrator I want is to cut a sport or say no to a walkon," said Lopiano. She suggested that a college consider tiering the athletic programs, with some sports receiving only partial or no scholarship funding.    When asked for her ideas for solutions, Schuld suggested that the commission focus on prongs two and three. "Take the onus off the proportionality test; stop counting body parts," said Schuld.    Besides Lopiano and Schuld, the other panelist in the third group was Bell, who spoke out strongly against reducing opportunities for non-scholarship athletes. He cited specific examples of athletes who had not done well in high school, but walked on in college and became successful athletes, then successful citizens in their post-sports careers.    "This is an illustration of a good law gone wrong, because of an interpretation," said Bell. "We will lose a lot of this kind of student-athlete if we continue with a system of quotas. Advocates of no change remind me of Chicken Little, running around saying the sky is falling."    Bell noted that many men's sports could not survive without walkon athletes. He also questioned why two members of the Commission were going on TV and giving their viewpoints before the hearings had concluded. He closed by saying that there "is no way the women will take a back seat if we eliminate the proportionality ruling."    The first panel included experts on statistics. This has been a major problem for the commissioners, who have heard conflicting "facts" throughout the hearings. In the Colorado Springs meetings, a number of commissioners wanted more information on college sports statistics, with the hope that they could find a set of numbers that they could trust and agree to. When it was over, it did not seem that this was achieved. Chairperson Leland said it was like a "Stats 60" lecture, and it gave him a "headache."  Corey Bray, who works on statistics for the NCAA, provided a variety of information on p