Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 4, 1993 TAG: 9304040066
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MADELYN ROSENBERG STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LEXINGTON LENGTH: Long
BETTER RELATIONS JUST THE START
TWINS JASON AND MARTIN DUNN have started a society dedicated to building better relations between Washington and Lee University and its Lexington neighbor, Virginia Military Institute. They don't want stereotypes to get in the way of potential friendships.
When Jason Dunn looks at his brother, he doesn't see the bulging, Rambo-type character that some folks may associate with cadets at Virginia Military Institute.
He just sees Martin Dunn - someone who's a little quiet at first, someone who has the respect of the younger "rats." Someone, who, with the exception of close-cropped hair, a uniform and a faded scar or freckle, looks just like him.
Jason Dunn, a junior at Washington and Lee University, doesn't make too much of the generalizations about VMI or his own institution. "It's more of a joking stereotype," he says. "It's not the view of all of the students."
Still, it's no secret that some VMI men have thought of Washington and Lee students as snobs and full-time partiers.
Or that some W&L students see cadets as brutes, stuck in prison for the week, unable to handle themselves on weekends.
The reason for those stereotypes, the Dunn brothers say, is that there has been very little interaction between the two schools, though they've stood side by side for 150 years.
"I think everyone knows someone at VMI, but they always feel that person is the exception to the rule," Jason Dunn says.
So last year, after students at the two colleges got into a fight at a fraternity party, the Dunns started trying to think of a way to improve relations.
"It was ugly," Martin Dunn says of that fight during his second year at VMI. "The police ended up chasing some of the cadets back to barracks. . . . Ugly."
The Ring-Tum Phi, W&L's student paper, ran a cartoon that month showing a cadet, bulging with muscles, grenades on his belt, in search of fun. Martin Dunn still remembers the caption: "I heard some music and I thought I'd stop by."
Positive encounters always had taken place between the two schools, Jason Dunn says, "but no one seemed to notice those."
"I felt almost that I had an obligation, as a student who had a brother there - much less a twin - to do something. I thought if anyone should do something, it should be us."
Their goal was to bring together the student bodies of these two schools with their connected histories, strong traditions and proximity.
Last summer, with Martin already in training at VMI and Jason waiting for school to start up the hill, the brothers decided to start a society that would include students from both institutions. The society would organize events and foster communication. The Dunns, who hail from Arkansas, would be the first leaders.
They named it the Preston Society, for a Washington and Lee alumnus who had lobbied to put VMI in Lexington.
"By establishing a joint organization, it won't be VMI cadets going to a W&L event, and it won't be W&L students going to a VMI function," Jason Dunn says.
Although the last building of one school sits next to the first building of the other, there is a history of little contact between VMI and W&L.
"Back in the Depression years when I was a cadet, VMI was more closely disciplined and regulated," said Col. George M. Brooke Jr., a retired VMI professor. "We had very little time and we were not allowed to have automobiles."
At the same time, Washington and Lee students had fraternities and a reputation as being the best-dressed in the country, said Brooke, who received his master's degree there. "Relations were very formal."
The students met occasionally at sporting contests, and from time to time, a cadet would pay a W&L student to take his place in barracks after taps.
The exchange would offer the cadet some stolen free time, and the W&L student pocket change. Penalties if the cadets were caught were high, Brooke said, "but there was contact between the two schools in that way."
Though VMI still is strict, there is more free time than there used to be, Brooke said, and more contact between the schools.
Something like the Preston Society could be good, he said, for these two schools that sit side by side. "The schools are very different, but they have a lot in common."
On Wednesday nights, Jason and a few other students walk up the hill to VMI to meet and plan.
("It's harder for the cadets to get off campus," Jason Dunn explained.)
Though the group has met all winter, it has yet to hold its first major events, which are planned for May: a lecture by Brooke on one night; a concert on another, following a lacrosse game between the two schools.
There has been support from administrators and students so far, but it is those events that will "legitimize us as an organization," Jason says.