Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 14, 1990 TAG: 9003143029
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Geoff Seamans Associate Editor
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Or maybe it was even earlier, in the mists of antiquity, when I manned this newspaper's Shenandoah Bureau.
It was a long time ago, anyway, when I covered my first controversial story involving Virginia Military Institute.
I've forgotten the details of the story. But I remember wandering around VMI, "interviewing" cadets - and hearing virtually every one preface his answer with the same comment.
On the issue itself, as I recall, there was a variety of views. But almost to a man, each cadet began by saying that you had to go to VMI, of course, to really understand it.
Well, no two places are ever exactly alike, and most of what journalists write is about stuff they've seen or heard or been told about rather than experienced directly. Moreover, the cadets surely were correct in implying that the differences that make VMI unique are bigger than the differences that, in their own way, make other schools unique.
But what bothered me then, and bothers me now, is the additional point: that because it is so different, VMI can be understood only by VMIers.
Fortunately for VMI, the cadets were wrong. If outsiders couldn't understand the place, there wouldn't be the state appropriations that keep it alive.
Of course, an outsider's understanding isn't the same. But from their more distant perspective, I submit, outsiders sometimes understand it better.
Should VMI admit women? Not as a matter of law, which is to be litigated in the courts, but as a matter of public policy. Not what VMI might be forced to do, but what it should do.
Outsiders just might be in a better position to answer the question, because they just might be able to see the weaknesses as well as the strengths of VMI.
There are strengths. One is the leveling impact of VMI's military regimen. (I'm not sure "discipline," if it implies an inner quality rather than a quality imposed from above, is quite the right word.)
I'll leave it for psychologists to argue whether such a regimen is the best way to instill in young people the lessons that daddy's money doesn't make them inherently superior, that in the end they'll be what they make of themselves, and that human beings in society are dependent on each other.
Such a regimen, however, is certainly one way to instill those lessons, and they're lessons worth teaching.
Also a strength is VMI's commitment to the principle that a college education, ideally, is more than classwork. A college education, ideally, also provides a (presumably nourishing) environment in which young people can begin to flower into maturity.
Again, the military regimen isn't the only way to do it. To cite one piece of the picture, the honor system extolled by VMI insiders is not unique to military schools.
But against the contemporary backdrop of mass-produced education and cafeteria curriculums, a VMI education - offering a product that's more than merely x amount of information - takes on added value.
The nature of the total environment that VMI has chosen to construct, however, also produces structural weaknesses.
One is where the military meets the classroom. VMI is no different from any other college or university in that its first mission is to provide academic instruction.
So long as VMI's unique system of non-academic life enhances (or at least doesn't detract from) academic performance, fine. But classroom rigor should never give way to military rigor. Ensuring that the military regimen stops short of impeding academic work, I should think, demands the constant attention of VMI officials. If it doesn't demand such attention, it ought to.
A second point of stress occurs when VMI graduates leave Lexington to enter the real world. They tend to do well, of course, and they're not all alike. VMI is not the gulag; the rat line may be a great leveler, but it doesn't erase individuality.
Yet there is a sense of fraternity that most VMI insiders seem to share. It seems to be a valuable source of self-confidence and of such values as honor and industry.
But it also can shade over into arrogance, dangerous arrogance. VMI is in peril, for example, when its most loyal supporters forget that it doesn't belong to them but to the 6 million people of Virginia.
And there seems a kind of arrogance - or at least a failure to see the forest for the trees - in the staunch resistance by most VMI insiders to the idea of coeducation.
What ought to govern the decision, if it's allowed to be made as an issue of policy rather than of law, is whether coeducation would shore up or erode the strengths and weaknesses of the VMI system.
Personally, I think that it would strengthen the weak points and weaken the strong ones - but that it would do more strengthening than weakening.
Where I personally happen to come down, however, is not the point. The point is that the mere fact coeducation would change things is a poor basis for the decision. Of course it would. So what?
As one of the school's 5.95-million-plus owners who are otherwise unconnected with VMI, what I'm interested in is the return on my tax investment. If change at VMI will increase that return, I'm for it; if change will reduce the return, I'm agin' it. But change in itself is neither good nor bad.
by CNB