Don't let mascot divert attention from real issues

To the editor:

I am a graduate of SEMO. My family settled in the area in 1803 and counted the Indians already here as friends and neighbors.

Indian heritage has never been offensively depicted in SEMO's logo or mascot. As to opposing teams "calling names," go to any home game and hear the drunks shout racial slurs and obscenities at the visiting teams and their fans. I sat through it and asked the campus security guard to intervene, but he blew it off.

It appears that the inbred blueblood townies of Cape Girardeau who still view SEMO as an extension of Central High School are obfuscating the real issues. They want a new mascot that is politically correct, something more marketable. They need to worry about larger issues such as why SMSU, which is more than 30 years younger than SEMO, has an enrollment almost three times larger and why Springfield totally eclipsed Cape Girardeau in population and industrial growth during the last century.

There is a perpetual inferiority complex with Don Quixote-type knights thrashing about. You would do us readers a great service by calling their hand and making them squirm.

GEORGE MILLER

Oak Ridge