
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 24, 1990                   TAG: 9003262154
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

LOSING FIX ON MILITARY COLLEGE'S MISSION

I HAVE YET to understand the grounds that supporters of the status quo use to legitimize what they mistakenly believe are valid distinctions between VMI and the U.S. Military Academy regarding the admission of female cadets.

Admittedly, the missions are somewhat different. VMI seeks to educate and train the "citizen soldier" and offers graduates a non-commissioning option; West Point presupposes all of its grads will make the service their career, and all are commissioned at the end of their four years. That said, this distinction surely has nothing to do with a rationale for excluding women from VMI's cadet corps.

Before I began my 20-year career in the Navy back in 1962, I had been accepted to West Point. I vividly recall a long (and frightening) description of the academy's "beast barracks" in the cadet admissions literature.

In fact, West Point continues to impose on its cadets a disciplinary system of soldier-building every bit as rigorous and ascetic as VMI's. Although I am unfamiliar with the academy's accommodations for its women, both physical and other, I feel certain that their presence has neither undermined nor diluted the school's ability to perform its fundamental mission. Why not find out and let your readership know?

My sense of VMI's real reasons for digging in so hard on this issue is that (a) its hidden agenda has as much to do with training "good ol' boys" as its stated mission does with creating officer material, and (b) physical plant changes thought required to accommodate women are daunting and costly.

The first reason is deeply rooted in the Southern, chauvinistic subculture, which is having trouble accepting the parallel notion of "good ol' girls"! Although the second reason is a valid one, it is not sufficient cause to continue what is patently sex discrimination.

If more of VMI's alumni had stuck around for full-service careers, I believe they would feel differently today about the contributions that women officers can make, and are making, to our armed forces. That's the only valid issue, and in it lies an amusing irony and another explanation for VMI's tunnel vision: Its administration and alumni have lost sight of the real reason for any military college's existence - to train a professional officer corps, not just to "play house" for four years. ROBERT A. FLIEGEL ROANOKE

by CNB