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

DATE: TUESDAY, October 12, 1993                   TAG: 9310120051
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NAACP TO FILE BRIEF OPPOSING VMI PROPOSAL

The Virginia State Conference of the NAACP will file a "friend of the court" brief opposing all-male Virginia Military Institute's proposal to avoid coeducation by setting up a military program at a female school.

"We are very leery of any proposal that has any tint of separatism, because historically we know that separate cannot be equal educationally," conference President Erenest Miller of Farmville said Monday.

The state organization OK'd plans to file the brief at the close of its annual convention Sunday in Blacksburg. Miller said the brief will be filed after leaders meet with NAACP attorneys.

Delegates "stopped just short" of saying VMI should admit women, he said.

Rather than go coed or become a private institution, state-supported VMI is seeking judicial approval of a plan to establish a military program for women at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton.

Though the proposal involves gender, not race, "it is still unfair," Miller said.

The NAACP also has recently expressed concern about threats and violence against black cadets at VMI.

Miller said the NAACP has asked VMI for details about death threats made against a black cadet, apparently by another cadet, and about the beating of another black cadet who subsequently left the school.

VMI faxed a response to NAACP leaders during the weekend convention, but Miller said the organization wants more information from the school. VMI last week asked the FBI to investigate the incidents.

Also at the close of the weekend convention, NAACP delegates approved a plan to forge "fair share" agreements with state colleges and universities to increase the number of tenured black professors and to set up boards to deal with campus discrimination.

During the convention at Virginia Tech, Miller said, "I recall the president of the college [NAACP] chapter there saying at a luncheon Friday that it was just exciting to see so many blacks there."

Black professors are "few and far between" on state campuses, Miller said. "I know there is room for improvement."

by CNB