Sometimes in this news business, there's a push to move through issues as they come up. There's so much going on, even on a campus this small, that at times you just have to ignore whole topics if you're to cover anything at all.

For this edition of the Sun Star, though, we're doing things a little differently. We're not going to tell you about the plays on campus, nor the latest hockey recruit, nor even discuss the state of university emergency crisis planning. Those are topics for next week. Instead, we're inviting you to consider one issue alone -- gender differences at UAF.

This is not a new debate for this campus. While digging through Sun Star archives, I happened upon an article from 1996 about how UAF was struggling with gender diversity. Nearly every accreditation report I've read has made some mention to gender equality. Even this year's advisory vote election could be taken as nothing shy of a referendum on gender roles in Alaska.

Gender equality is not something that can be achieved overnight. But it is something worth noting and analyzing for possible repairs.

At this stage in the game, that's largely the issue -- what to do to fix the inequalities that pop up. At times, the solutions we put forward create new problems we had not anticipated. The Athletics Department found itself taking out a loan to cover Title IX scholarships, leaving the department with a financial debt it will someday have to pay. Faculty have mandated that all university committees have at least one woman, which at a campus with fewer tenured women faculty members than men means an increased workload for many women.

Other solutions remain elusive. Men struggle in the classroom and get arrested more often, which research suggests has more to do with socialization than any laws or policies set down. ASUAF, the student government, has not had a woman for president in more than a decade, perhaps because they're pushed into the vice presidency but more likely because they choose not to run.

At times, the issue boils down to money. At UAF, 69 percent of women in 2006 fell below the median faculty salary, of $57,004.55. Only 39 percent of men dropped below that number. Ideally, both would be at 50 percent. Yet instead, there's the gap.

Put in simpler terms, just take a look at the faculty at UAF who are paid more than Gov. Sarah Palin. Of the 79 employees earning more than $125,000 in 2006, only 12 were women. The seesaw tilts in one direction.

There are no easy fixes. If there were, we'd have nothing to write about, and this edition of the Sun Star wouldn't exist. But we owe it to each other, as students, faculty, staff and administrators, to look over why these gender gaps exist. Equality is a cause worth aiming for, even if we stumble on the way to the target.