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

DATE: TUESDAY, July 3, 1990                   TAG: 9007030378
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MALE CLOISTER

"MEMBERS ONLY," reads the sign over the door to the cloakroom of the Virginia Senate. Not "MEN ONLY." But tradition dies hard - nowhere harder than in a legislative body that sometimes fancies itself the House of Lords.

Women have served in the 40-member Senate since 1980. First one, then two, now three. By unspoken but hidebound rule, however, female senators have been expected to keep out of the cloakroom.

The cloakroom is an anteroom off the Senate chamber that serves as a lounge and passageway to the men's toilet. It also serves as a den for deal-making among the male senators. Political conspiracies have been born there. Votes have been swapped. In other words: legislating outside earshot of the women legislators.

Hampton Sen. Hunter Andrews' proposal to turn the Capitol office of Lt. Gov. Don Beyer into a restroom for women senators has drawn a lot of chuckles and "poor Don" laments. But Beyer, who serves as the president of the Senate, is not being booted into the street. He has other offices in the Supreme Court building not far from the Capitol.

And Beyer's Capitol office, which is adjacent to the male-cloistering cloakroom, is the logical place for a private restroom for the women senators - who now have to leave the Senate and go to a different floor in the Capitol to find a bathroom. Beyer, to his credit, doesn't oppose the plumbing proposal.

This is not just a question of "potty parity," of making it as convenient for the women as for the men to get to the toilets.

Andrews' proposal to knock down a wall and build the restroom would, in effect, also knock down the sex barriers to the clubby cloakroom. It's time for the Senate to unman those barriers.

by CNB