IOWA CITY (AP) -- The list of critics of the pink visitors' locker room at the University of Iowa's Kinnick Stadium is growing.

Several professors and students joined the call Tuesday for the athletic department to do away with the pink showers, carpeting and lockers - a decades-long Hawkeye football tradition.

Critics say the use of pink demeans women, perpetuates offensive stereotypes about women and homosexuality and puts the university in the uncomfortable position of tacitly supporting those messages.

"I want the locker room gone," law school professor Jill Gaulding told a university committee studying the athletic department's compliance with NCAA standards, including gender equity.

"Research shows brains pick up stereotypes like sponges soak up water," said Gaulding, who specializes in discrimination law. "One solution to reducing stereotypes, especially negative ones, is to not have them around."

For decades, visiting football teams playing at Kinnick Stadium have dressed and showered in a locker room painted in pink. The tradition was started by former Iowa coach Hayden Fry, a psychology major who said pink had a calming and passive effect on people.

But as part of the stadium's two-year, $88 million makeover, athletic officials took the former coach's interior decorating ideas to another level, splashing pink across the brick walls, shower floors and installing pink metal lockers, carpeting, sinks, showers and urinals.

The debate gained momentum and media attention last week when Erin Buzuvis, a visiting law school professor and the first outspoken critic of the color choice, told reporters she had received death threats after voicing objections on her Web site.

In response, university President David Skorton issued a statement condemning the threats, encouraged an open yet respectful debate and ordered university police to investigate comments deemed threatening.

By late Monday, more than 165 messages had been posted on Buzuvis' Internet blog, most of them critical of her opposition.

One student spoke in favor of preserving Fry's legacy. Another said pink, the color adopted by breast cancer patients, represents strength and courage.

At his weekly press conference Tuesday, Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz declined to weigh in on the debate.

"I wish I had enough time to think about it," Ferentz said. "The idea is that it was supposed … to have a calming effect. But I really haven't burned a lot of brain cells on it."

Despite the venomous response, Buzuvis refuses to back down.

Buzuvis said that because pink is regarded as a color of little girls, it's impossible not to perceive its use in a football locker room as sexist and homophobic.

"It is equivalent to painting the word 'sissy' or 'girlie man' all across the walls," she said. "What you're really saying is you're weak like a girl. That belittles every female athlete out there."

Kim Marra, professor of American studies and theater arts, said momentum for change among faculty, staff and students is growing.

"There is no question that it sanctions the use of epithets like sissy and faggot," Marra told the committee. "It's the 21st century and times change."

Assistant athletic director Jane Meyer declined to comment on the controversy, saying the department would wait until the committee issues its report.