Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 22, 1993 TAG: 9401140014
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Paxton Davis
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Virginia's 1993 gubernatorial campaign has been a classic case, and here is a fresh exhibit:
It arrived last week in a plain envelope without return address, but bearing a Roanoke cancellation and addressed with a label I believe I recognize as the mailing label of the Virginia Military Institute alumni organization for the Roanoke Valley.
The blessedly single-sheet letter inside bore no letterhead but was signed by two men identifying themselves as ``Bob Copty '70'' and ``Bill Gearhart '70.'' Apart from that I have no idea who they are.
Except, of course, that the designation ``'70'' refers to their class year at VMI, though the letter's salutation made that clear anyway, ``Dear Friend of VMI,'' it ran; then went on to warn me that its intention was to enlist my support ``in our fight to keep VMI from being torn apart by those who would destroy us in the name of political correctness.''
Those who want to tear VMI apart, you will hardly be surprised to learn, are those who want to end its status as a single-sex institution dependent upon taxpayers' funding.
Still, aver Messrs. Copty and Gearhart, their plea is ``in no way an attempt to tell you how to vote in the upcoming gubernatorial election.'' Their only aim is to ``inform'' me about how Republican George Allen and Democrat Mary Sue Terry stand on the issue of women at VMI.
Then the misrepresentation begins.
``George Allen supports VMI's single-sex admission policy and would be a governor who would allow VMI to exist unchanged.''
Are Messrs. Copty and Gearhart unable to grasp the simple fact that Virginia law gives no governor the power to ``allow VMI to exist unchanged''? Whether the governor is Allen or Terry, Wilder or Fitzhugh Lee, that power has rested with the General Assembly, and now it rests with the federal courts. Copty and Gearhart not only have it wrong; they seriously misrepresent what a governor can do. He may have an opinion, as they do; he is welcome to it; but he cannot do what the law does not allow him to do.
Then it becomes the turn of Mary Sue Terry, who, Messrs. Copty and Gearhart claim, ``has, on many occasions, advocated not just the co-eduation of VMI'' but ``opposed the remedial plan'' with Mary Baldwin College now before the courts. The truth is that Terry avoided the VMI issue as attorney general and excused herself from the federal suit, and that her only public comment on the Mary Baldwin scheme is that she doesn't believe the courts will accept it.
Of such nonsense - of such misrepresentation - is the Copty/Gearhart letter made.
No one disputes their right to an opinion about VMI, as silly and childish as I find it. No one disputes their right to urge the election of George Allen, which seems to me goofy. But those who propose to address the electorate publicly have a duty to state the facts correctly. Messrs. Copty and Gearhart, either ignorantly or to suit their own purposes, mangle the truth.
Three final questions:
If they ``in no way'' want to tell me how to vote, why do they enclose an Allen bumper sticker and urge me to display it?
Who paid for their letter? If it is addressed, as I believe, with a VMI alumni-group label, is the label state property and haven't taxpayers paid for it? And since when do public institutions take sides in partisan political contests?
Won't someone please tell Messrs. Copty and Gearhart that ``it's'' is a contraction of ``it is,'' while the possessive is ``its''? Is this how well VMI teaches English?
\ Paxton Davis is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.
by CNB