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

DATE: THURSDAY, April 26, 1990                   TAG: 9004260554
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ON VMI, WILDER'S `NEUTRALITY' ISN'T

So much for Wilder's argument that mere governors have nothing to do with coeducation, or lack of same, at VMI.

The four VMI board members were among the hundreds of appointments and reappointments that Gov. Baliles thought he'd made before leaving office in January, only to learn they'd fallen victim to a legislative glitch in the confirmation proceedings.

The appointments thus became Wilder's to make. And while the new governor has stuck with many of the same people, including those for the VMI board, Wilder hasn't been shy about changing names where it has suited him.

Almost alone among Virginia politicians, Baliles had suggested the U.S. Justice Department might have a point in challenging the VMI policy. And because he had, the public did not have to rely on such indirect evidence as board appointments to get an idea of where he stood. He sought to reappoint the four members of the VMI board, it could be inferred, for reasons other than their views on the coeducation issue.

Wilder, though, won't say what he thinks. Because he won't, Virginians are forced to rely on hints and clues to figure him out. The VMI reappointments take on a meaning for him that they didn't for Baliles.

Indeed, Wilder is so "neutral" that he has asked the court to remove his name as a defendant in Justice's suit against VMI. What does the question of coed cadets, Wilder asks, have to do with a little ol' governor?

But as last week's announcements make clear, responsibility cannot be evaded so conveniently. When you're a governor, to do seemingly little - for example, simply to repeat an act of your predecessor - in fact can be to do a lot.

In this instance, it is to ensure that VMI and the commonwealth will continue to resist changing the status quo. It is to ensure that money and energy will continue to be spent on fighting the Justice suit. It is to ensure that another route, voluntary coeducation, will not soon be taken.

This is hardly astonishing. Having the issue in court gives Wilder and other Virginia politicians too handy an escape hatch. They can maintain a specious neutrality by pretending that the question is for only the courts to decide, that they somehow are duty-bound to avoid taking a stand so long as the matter is in litigation.

If the courts don't rule that the VMI policy is constitutionally impermissible, the politicians' escape hatch would be closed off. They would have to take a stand, and the issue could be a hot one: Whatever else the Justice lawsuit has done, it has raised the consciousness of a divided public.

And whatever else would happen if the courts do rule against VMI and the state, one likely result would be a happy bunch of Virginia politicians. Many of them may not like the idea of female cadets. But they like even less the idea of having to make tough decisions for which they, rather than the federal courts, might feel the heat.