Letter to the Editor

Athletic scholarships for men

I recently learned about Southeast Missouri State University's Walk for Women's Athletics event and couldn't help questioning the implication that there is a need for more scholarships for women. After all, it's common knowledge that college campuses across the country have been at least 60 percent female since the early 1990s, even though females only make up 51 percent of the population.

Clearly, there needs to be more scholarships for men, not women. And if men make up a disproportionate share of college athletes -- which is hard to imagine after Title IX -- it's also true that women are generally overrepresented in academic organizations, the theater, the staffs of school newspapers (not to mention some sports).

Yet the university continues to neglect the half of the population that has been politically out of fashion since the 1960s, despite the increasingly visible side effects of that neglect. For shame, SEMO.

ALEX S. CARSON, McClure, Ill.