Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 11, 1990 TAG: 9003112624
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DANIEL HOWES HIGHER EDUCATION WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
They're reading the newspapers and debating among themselves in the board rooms and men's rooms burrowed in South Carolina's halls of power, including the General Assembly.
Their alma mater, built 148 years ago on the outskirts of historic Charleston, S.C., seems lucky to have escaped, if temporarily, the federal government's wrath for barring women from the corps of cadets.
That prize, spurred by a complaint from a female high school student in Virginia, went to VMI. Never mind that federal officials have received two complaints about The Citadel's admissions policy, that women have been graduating from the night school since 1966 and that last month the school rejected a young woman's application for the corps because "being male is a requirement."
The Justice Department is investigating the complaints against The Citadel, but a spokeswoman would not say if they would result in a sex-discrimination lawsuit similar to the one filed March 1 against VMI in U.S. District Court in Roanoke.
And like the men of VMI, Citadel men are divided over whether their school should spare no expense to keep women from the white Gothic barracks or if it should adjust to changing times, avoid a public relations debacle and open the 2,000-cadet corps to all comers.
"I don't think they have any place in a school like that," said Henry Brabham, a 1950 graduate of The Citadel. "I just think it'll hurt the corps. Maybe I'm a male chauvinist, I reckon. But when it comes time to fight, I don't want a girl next to me in a foxhole."
Count Brabham, president of Brabham Petroleum Co. and owner of the LancerLot sports complex in Vinton, is among the "inevitablists," a group who have sadly concluded that women will eventually populate the corps despite nostalgic opposition.
"I'm afraid the government is going to force it to happen," he said. "I don't think they [Citadel officials] have a leg to stand on, legally."
Said John Warley, a 1967 graduate who is now a lawyer in Newport News: "If I had to bet about the outcome of this thing, I think it would come out on the side of admitting women. The presence of women would not be without impact. But I'm not certain that's bad."
Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, D-S.C., a 1942 graduate, recalls a time 50 years ago when Citadel cadets used to try to sneak their female companions into the barracks.
Now he maintains that women belong at The Citadel, not as visitors but as members of the corps.
"You cannot have government-supported programs, with tax support, without the right of every race, color, creed and sex" to use them, he told The Associated Press.
"We're going to have to adjust to it. It's worked extremely well without the women, but it can work with them. They're accorded that right," Hollings said.
Citadel officials remain tight-lipped about the brewing legal battle and the media attention that's swirling around VMI and, to a lesser extent, their school. The 16-man board of visitors, which includes Republican Gov. Carroll Campbell, has not discussed recently the prospect of admitting women to the corps, according to board Chairman William Risher.
"There's no sentiment on the governing board to admit females to the cadet corps," he said in an interview. "But if it's demonstrated to us that it's a violation of the law, we'll do what we need to do to comply with the law."
Risher echoes VMI alumni who have written letters to newspaper editors across Virginia or been quoted in news accounts criticizing "people [who] would like to see this thing resolved in the forum of public opinion."
In a recent editorial, The State, the newspaper in Columbia, S.C., urged The Citadel "to accept the realities of law and contemporary life and drop its policy" of keeping the corps all-male.
"What could be more graceful and realistic than for The Citadel to accept what will be and voluntarily admit qualified females into the corps of cadets?" the newspaper asked.
News reports there have described the "Citadel network" as one that helps the military school's graduates wend their ways up corporate ladders to board chairmanships and company presidencies in impressive numbers.
Paul Short, a South Carolina lawmaker and 1968 graduate, told The State that Citadel men don't "reap any economic benefits over anyone else." Indeed, school officials and alumni find themselves defending the school's admissions practices and unique status in South Carolina while sidestepping suggestions that The Citadel provides advantages other state schools do not.
Sentiment seems to be growing within South Carolina's power circles that launching a protracted legal wrangle similar to VMI's battle with the Justice Department would tarnish a reputation recently polished by U.S. News & World Report. Last October, the magazine ranked The Citadel the seventh-best college in the South - which prompted a female high school student in South Carolina to apply for admission.
"I think I would find as graceful a way as I could to avoid a lot of negative publicity that this situation could bring the college," Fred Sheheen, the South Carolina state higher education commissioner, told a newspaper there.
If The Citadel's board were to heed Sheheen's advice, it would be a marked contrast from its counterpart in Lexington. Last month, the 17-member VMI board - including one woman - reaffirmed its all-male admissions policy the same day Virginia Attorney General Mary Sue Terry asked a federal court in Roanoke to declare the policy constitutional and legal.
The sense of confrontation that infuses the comments and pronouncements of VMI men seems either absent or tempered in Citadel men.
Perhaps it's that The Citadel had been offering undergraduate and graduate degrees to women for 24 years while barring them from the corps. Or maybe the legal thrust-and-parry between VMI and the Justice Department is a battle The Citadel would prefer not to join.
"We've always thought of ourselves as more progressive than the Veemies, [the men of] VMI," quipped Bevin Alexander, a writer in Fluvanna County who graduated in 1949. "I haven't received any exhortation from Charleston to defend the ramparts."
Progressive, perhaps. But some traditions, no matter how anachronistic, remain. The Citadel still plays "Dixie" at football games; cadets wave Confederate battle flags while black cadets sit passively, according to an alumnus who attended two games last fall.
Warley, the Newport News lawyer, said, "The fact that The Citadel has offered degrees to women and offered them the use of their facilities may make opinions down there less rabid."
The real resistance, he suggested, comes from those who pine for college days which through the haze of fading memory resemble "an extended golf weekend [on which] they just don't want women along."
Said Alexander: "I think we [The Citadel and VMI] do have the same intensity. But I think the feeling I've discerned around here with VMI guys is that it's not the feeling of shared experience [they want to preserve] but that they want to keep it to themselves."
VMI graduates have "a stronger feeling for this unique experience," which "Citadel men have not developed into a cult," he said.
John Brasington, a '73 Citadel alumnus who's attending seminary in Columbia, S.C., maintains that more astute alumni, like Hollings and state lawmakers, recognize that certain Citadel traditions can no longer be defended.
"I think there's a group down here saying, `This deal is done. That ultimately you can't finance that place without federal and state monies and you can't take federal and state monies without admitting women,' " he said.
About one-third of The Citadel's $39 million budget comes from government funds. VMI receives about $11 million of its $25 million annual budget from Virginia taxpayers. All cadets at both schools are enrolled in ROTC, and therefore receive federal funds.
Melvin Williamson, an '80 alumnus whose wife and sister have master's degrees from The Citadel, said he doesn't "see a huge bloodbath over it . . . especially if VMI goes down. I think most Citadel people are waiting to see what happens to VMI before deciding what to do."
That decision may be leaning toward opening the gates to women voluntarily, according to state Sen. Ernie Passailaigue, D-Charleston, whose district includes The Citadel.
"I think they would shy away from the limelight on this issue," he said in an interview. "I think it's probably going to be a certainty that sooner or later - and probably sooner - The Citadel will have women in the corps of cadets.
"We've got to recognize a fact of life. We live in a land of equal opportunity and nobody wants to deny that."
So says a politician who's got something to lose in a state where Citadel men wield considerable influence and money. Passailaigue, a first-term senator, is running for the Democratic nomination to challenge the incumbent Republican governor this fall.
Ten years ago, when John Brasington ran for a seat in Congress, he called for The Citadel to admit women and stop playing "Dixie." He received two contributions from Citadel men.
by CNB