Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 8, 1991 TAG: 9104080119
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MADELYN ROSENBERG HIGHER EDUCATION WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The lawyer, working for the Justice Department in a trial that will determine whether VMI's all-male tradition is constitutional, asks a witness to describe a "rat sweat party" and a "rat bible."
Again, laughter.
Again.
The alumni, who fill this space in U.S. District Court, know these terms and always will. And as they sit, watching the trial of their school's 152-year-old policy, they remember calisthenics in the bathroom, steam pouring out of the showers . . . push-ups on a stoop . . . racing up the stairs to their fourth-floor barracks bedrooms.
The VMI men here, young and old, share a bond.
"We're brother rats," shrugged Cyril Fraser, class of 1939. "We all went through it."
At the institute, rats are freshmen. "It's an affectionate term, tied to the fourth class," Col. N. Michael Bissell, commandant of cadets at VMI, testified last week. "It's the We're brother rats. We all went through it. Cyril Fraser member of VMI class of 1939 lowest animal on Earth."
A rat, says Halsey Hill, another from VMI's Class of '39, is part of the VMI experience. And it's "no worse than someone that goes to one of those other schools and has to run around in a dunce cap" to join a fraternity.
But the "VMI experience" is something more, say the men who are watching this trial, some of them with wives by their sides.
"The institute is a bond; we don't lose that," said Fraser, who is from Nashville, Tenn. He arranged a business trip to this area last week so he could drop in on Hill, a former Roanoke insurance man, and on the proceedings, too.
To look around the courtroom during a recess is to see a mini-reunion.
True, many of the alumni who gather here have never met. But that doesn't stop them from reminiscing about their glory days at VMI.
"The first thing the faculty told us as rats was this: `We've got a lot of regulations and you're expected to abide by all of them. Don't come belly-achin' to us if you're caught breaking the rules,' " Roanoker Bain Sinclair, 82, recalled.
Frank Spencer, who drove down here from his Charlottesville home for pretrial hearings, didn't know a soul when the proceedings started last week.
Since then, he has met up with an old professor and a former buddy from the track team.
Spencer, class of '53, came here prepared to work on a book of puzzles to pass the time during the long recesses. But now, during the breaks, he talks.
"This is history in the making," said Spencer, who is retired from the Air Force and Virginia Power Co. "I'm going to follow this all the way through."
O. Hume Powers Jr., Spencer's former teammate and president of Al-Steel Fabricators Inc. in Roanoke, is taking time off from work to hear Justice Department attorneys ask questions about this school. And he's listening to them tell the court that not only is the policy violating the 14th Amendment, but a change in the policy would make his school better.
"I'd say about 100 percent of us here are opposed to women at VMI," he said.
A lot of women are opposed to it, too, Hill added.
If limited to the women in this courtroom, he would be right. But other women, such as the female high school student whose complaint about the policy prompted a Justice Department investigation, would not agree.
During the trial, an admissions officer said 346 women have requested information about the school over the past two years.
For many of these men, the concept of coeducation at their small alma mater in Lexington has never been a consideration. Neither has going any place else for college.
"I guess I was born with it," said Sinclair, class of '31. "It's the only thing I wanted to do."
The courtroom last week was ablaze with red and yellow ties. Men who hadn't worn their war medals in years attached them to tweed coats.
A few of the younger alums sported pins in VMI colors that read: The Spirit.
The spirit of VMI is what this trial is about, they say.
There is also a school song called "The Spirit," which Maj. Gen. John Knapp, eyes twinkling, sings softly for a reporter during a recess.
Were the onlookers at this trial a jury, their decision would be a quick one: Leave VMI alone.
This case, though, will be decided by U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser, who has said in an earlier ruling that the school faces "a high burden of proof. It must provide an `exceedingly persuasive justification' of the single-sex policy."
The judge already has predicted the loser will appeal the case, so it is likely the decision of whether the policy violates the 14th Amendment will rest not with Kiser but with the Supreme Court.
Maybe, say a few of the alumni milling around the hallway during a break. "But we're not losing."
by CNB