Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 24, 1993 TAG: 9403090006
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Leaving home and the comfort of familiar friends for the first time, making that first assault on the halls of higher education, with its different routines, its unknown standards ... this can be a frightening foray into what must seem, at first, alien territory.
And that's on congenial campuses like Virginia Tech and Radford University, where all you have to worry about is getting a roommate you loathe or a stat professor who doesn't speak English. Mere trifles.
Imagine the anxiety one Shannon Faulkner is feeling this week as the opening of classes approaches at The Citadel in South Carolina. Talk about alien territory.
The Citadel is one of only two all-male, state-supported (i.e. taxpayer-supported; male- and female-taxpayer-supported) military schools in the nation. The other, of course, is our own Virginia Military Institute, just up the road in Lexington.
Faulkner is ... how to put this ... a non-male. A female, in other words. A woman.
Like our own VMI, The Citadel has been fighting a pitched battle to keep women from scaling its walls and laying waste to its traditions. Women, it is assumed, just aren't tough enough.
But think about that, and about Shannon Faulkner, an honor student, who, from what little we know about her, seems a nice kid who spent the summer working at a day-care center and who is a little anxious about leaving home and more than a little anxious about being the only woman at her new school.
That's understandable. Other freshmen fear what seems a potentially hostile environment because college is new and unknown. Shannon can expect to face hostility that is more real than imagined. The Citadel has made it clear: She is not wanted.
Now, when she was assumed to be a he, she was.
The Citadel, you see, had accepted Shannon based on the normal admissions criteria, such as her excellent grades and test scores. She had asked her high school to delete any reference to her sex on her transcript, however, and the college's application doesn't ask.
Why it doesn't is a mystery, since it is the critical, determining criterion for acceptance. For once the military school found out that Shannon was a girl, it withdrew its acceptance.
She sued, charging that the admissions policy violates her equal-protection rights. The case is unresolved, and in the meantime The Citadel is allowing Shannon to attend classes as a day student. No uniform, no participation in the Corps of Cadets, no on-campus housing, no meals in mess. Not wanted.
Why Shannon wants to attend the Citadel badly enough to challenge the deeply ingrained status quo is unknown. But it is a gutsy thing to do.
It's another reminder that physical strength is not the only measure of toughness. Shannon Faulkner may be the toughest kid at The Citadel this year.
by CNB