Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 14, 1991 TAG: 9104160457
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: B-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In all the days of testimony and arguments, the fundamental contradiction in the case for a men-only VMI seldom was addressed. The witness who perhaps came closest was one of sociology's grand old men, brought to the stand by VMI's defenders on the trial's next-to-last day.
Testifying by videotape, David Riesman - 82 and author of such well-known works as "The Lonely Crowd" - acknowledged that he's never visited the school. But on the basis of reading and interviews, he offered a stout defense of a male-only VMI.
In doing so, he tried to resolve the contradiction and, perhaps unintentionally, helped lay bare an ugly little assumption, which both lie at the heart of the justification for a men-only VMI.
The contradiction is basic. How can both (a) the VMI system be so valuably unique, as defenders of the males-only policy argue, and (b) there be ample opportunity for women to obtain equivalent educations at other state colleges in Virginia, as they also argue?
Riesman resolved the difficulty by amending the second part of the argument. It's not that women can get a VMI education elsewhere. Rather, it's that women are so different from men that they, well, just don't need the variety of educational opportunities that ought to be available to men.
Women lack "the ferocity" to make VMI's "rat" system work. Because women mature more rapidly than men, a woman would be "more unlikely to subject herself to [the system's] discipline." But "men need discipline." They "need to be in an environment where their tricks and games . . . are of no avail."
The argument is intriguing in its echo of chivalric notions about women's virtue vs. men's sinfulness - notions traditionally used to buttress a double standard by which males are free to roam while females are kept home in the castle. The argument manages to defend keeping women out of VMI on the grounds that women are better than men, and so need less.
It is, of course, an argument largely irrelevant to the case - at stake are legal, not educational, disputes. It is also an unconvincing argument, at least as applied to the issue at hand.
A VMI with women is "inconceivable" to Riesman, but it needn't be. The coming of coeducation to the nation's military academies isn't a perfect analogy, but it's close enough.
At the U.S. Military Academy, Col. Patrick Toffler testified Monday, coeducation brought change but not devastating change. VMI could remain sufficiently distinctive to continue as a bulwark against "the homogenizing impulse" in higher education that Riesman dislikes.
Even granting that single-sex status is the benchmark of a worthwhile diversity in higher education, Virginia is still in constitutional jeopardy. The commonwealth has such an institution for men, VMI; it has none for women.
True, private women's colleges in the state receive a measure of governmental aid. But none is a state agency, owned, operated and controlled by the state. VMI is.
> Riesman's sociological generalizations may carry weight - but they are still generalizations. If the issue were a disproportionately high ratio of male to female cadets, as almost certainly will be true of VMI if it opens its doors to women, maybe those generalizations would apply.
The question now, however, is one of individual rights under the law, not gender generalities. How under the Constitution, can a woman - even if only exceptional women would be interested - be denied the benefits of a unique state agency simply on account of her sex?
Meanwhile, beyond the constitutional issue lingers another thought arising from Riesman's testimony. Would a bit less ferocity and a bit more maturity be bad for VMI?
by CNB