Molly Tumanic

Like it or not, there seems to be several “universal truths” that exist on college campuses without any examination as to why and if they are true. One such “truth” is that the Dave Matthews Band is a group worth listening to. Another is that The Joynt is the “hippie bar” on Water Street (come on, at least half of us in there don’t wear Tevas and the word “hippie” is too weak a word for what goes on at The Joynt politically).

On a more serious note, another one of these “truths” is that men are the dominant gender in our society.

This of course was legally true before the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920.

The focus of many contemporary feminists is on creating true social equality through the elimination of the “glass ceiling” and “good old boys clubs.” For some, but certainly not most, the focus is for not only equality with men, but to have women surpass them.

For me, feminism is not the “F-word.” I firmly believe that men and women should have equal rights and equal access. I am a feminist. But the idea that men are the dominant gender in all aspects of society is simply untrue, especially in higher education and especially on this campus.

As a male student at UW-Eau Claire, you will be outnumbered at a rate of three to two (granted, for many of us, this is not necessarily a problem). If you are a freshman male enrolled in English 110 you will, on average, earn a .30 lower grade (roughly the difference between a B+ and an A-) than freshmen women.

In Math 110, men averaged .16 below freshmen women. This difference also extends to areas that stereotypically favor men – the hard sciences and social sciences. After the freshman year, women on average have a GPA of 2.98, while men average 2.72. By the senior year, the gap becomes larger with women averaging 3.15 and men 2.87.

As a male student, you will earn fewer credits each year compared to women. You are less likely to be retained at Eau Claire year to year. And as an added bonus, you are more likely to be in poor academic standing.

During this study, 63 classes were examined and only eight were found in which freshmen men did better than freshmen women: French 102, Geography 104, Geology 102, History 124, Math 010, Math 203, Math 245 and Music 142.

When it comes to graduation, men fall further behind. Nineteen percent of women graduate in four years while only 9 percent of men do. Over six years, 55 percent of women graduate while 52 percent of men do. Most shockingly, men make up only roughly 25 percent of students who graduate with honors.

According to data from the fall semester 2003 of Student Services, men were three times less likely to use a tutor and roughly four times less likely to be tutors.

Men use Counseling Services half as much as women. Men make up only 25 percent of Health Services’ clinical visits. As mentioned previously, there are more women than men on this campus, yet these numbers are not proportional to the admission numbers and point to a larger problem.

Thankfully, there is currently an on-campus committee looking into these issues and attempting to find causes for these differences and maybe some solutions. Nearly all of my sources derive from that committee’s work and can be found online at www.uwec.edu/lyonsaj/menstudies/stuserviceuse.htm and at www.uwec.edu/lyonsaj/menstudies/uwecdata.htm.

The crux of this issue is that men are not less talented or less intelligent than women, and it is exactly that sort of thinking that said women could not be physicians, politicians or construction workers.

So where do we go from here? Part of the initial problem simply is acknowledging that men are not performing academically as well as women. Men also fail to take advantage of the additional services that the university offers to help students succeed at a much lower rate than women.

Beyond that, we may have to change the way we think about men, which may prove to be as difficult as changing the way we thought about women.