ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, September 22, 1996 TAG: 9609230078
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LEXINGTON
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Above
BUT SOME CADETS expressed sadness about the inevitable changes.
Two years ago, when Juan Delosreyes was a lowly "rat" at Virginia Military Institute, he and nine brother rats endured a 15-minute, super-intense exercise session - called a "sweat party" - because one of them failed to tip his hat and say "ma'am" to a general's wife.
The Rat Bible, the so-called "source of all knowledge" for first-year students at VMI, mandates cadets treat all "ladies" with such respect. A VMI man may act like a man among men in the barracks, but "cadets should never forget themselves when in the presence of lady," the Rat Bible warns. "You are at all times a cadet and a gentleman."
But next year, the current junior from West Palm Beach, Fla., will be able to call certain women to attention and drop them for 20 push-ups - just because he wants to.
A squeaker of a vote by the VMI Board of Visitors on Saturday in favor of coeducation at the all-male school means women may be among the "Rat Mass" that reports to post in August.
Superintendent Josiah Bunting III said the rat line won't change a bit with women in it. They'll be subjected to the same rigorous, adversarial training that men have endured at the institute.
They'll have to meet the same physical standards and can get "flamed" like any other rat. That is, during certain times of day, upperclassmen can quiz rats on their Rat Bible, demand those push-ups and generally harangue them.
The rat line may not change, but the presence of women in it presents cadets with something of a conundrum. No one tips his hat to a rat, the lowest life form at VMI. But what if the rat is a lady?
"A rat is always just a rat," said Tom Warburton, a junior from Pulaski. It has to be that way for the system to work. But that doesn't mean living in barracks with women, as he will have to do next year, will necessarily be comfortable.
"For anybody that flames rats, it will be a major, major difference," he said.
Yet Warburton believes the board made the right choice. "It seems like the institute loses either way," he said. But going coed gives the school a greater chance of staying the same or getting better.
Going private, he said, was less desirable because of what might be lost: the ROTC programs at VMI and the socioeconomically diverse student body.
Two prospective VMI students checking out the campus Saturday afternoon agreed.
VMI is Midlothian High School senior Jarrett Blevins' first choice for college, but if one more member of the board of visitors had voted for going private, he would automatically have been left with his second choice, James Madison University.
"My dad said he won't send me to VMI if it's private," he said. A private VMI would simply have cost too much.
Tom Abbott, a senior at Cox High School in Virginia Beach, was breathing easier, too. He wants to go to VMI, but if it had no ROTC program he would have crossed it off his list; he wants to graduate with a commission for the armed services.
Elsewhere on campus, the announcement prompted only a barely perceptible skip in the usual cadence of cadet life. For most it seemed a foregone conclusion.
Two TVs flickered in the campus canteen. On one, a couple of dozen rats watched the Notre Dame football game. On the other, a few cadets were watching CNN for news of the decision.
However they go about implementing coeducation, said Delosreyes, the junior from West Palm Beach, "I hope they get opinions from the existing corps."
He thinks women should eventually have their own barracks and their own rat line.
Mike Belenky, a senior from Annapolis, Md., decided long ago that whatever the board decided would be a disappointment. Son of a VMI man, Belenky came to the post "for the brotherhood." Coeducation is the best alternative among those available, but it doesn't make it any easier to swallow, he said.
The class of 1997 will never have to share the barracks with women. That saves Belenky some anguish. He'll never have to experience a VMI different from the one his father attended and that he's experienced for more than three years.
But after he graduates in May, he lamented, he'll never be able to come back to his old school.
"Technically, I can. Emotionally, I can't."
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