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

DATE: SATURDAY, October 30, 1993                   TAG: 9310300221
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

GOVERNMENT: VMI NOT COOPERATING

U.S. Justice Department attorneys argued Friday that they are having difficulty determining whether a proposed leadership program for women is parallel to the education offered at Virginia Military Institute.

They said VMI attorneys won't give them all the information they have asked for.

If the government finds the plan unacceptable, attorneys say, they intend to submit a plan of their own.

"We've always had that right," Nathaniel Douglas, a government attorney, said after a hearing Friday in U.S. District Court in Roanoke.

The hearing was the first since VMI submitted to the court a proposed leadership program at Mary Baldwin College as a remedy to litigation over VMI's all-male admission policy. The program would offer a military-style education for women at the private women's college in Staunton.

The Justice Department has until Nov. 15 to file a response to the Mary Baldwin proposal. District Judge Jackson Kiser granted the government a three-day extension from the original Nov. 12 response date, in part because of a delay caused by VMI attorneys' refusal to produce some information.

Government attorneys, frustrated by what they viewed as VMI attorneys' refusal to cooperate with information requests, filed a motion asking that Kiser order the attorneys to hand over documents they had refused to produce and respond to questions they had not answered.

But VMI attorneys, calling the government's requests for information excessive, had filed a motion for a protective order limiting the scope of information they had to produce. To answer all of the government's questions and produce all of the documents that were requested would mean "relitigating issues," argued William G. Broaddus, one of several attorneys representing VMI.

Gov. Douglas Wilder filed a memorandum Friday supporting VMI's motion.

Kiser asked attorneys for both sides to come up with a broad outline of what "can and cannot be done." He said that the Justice Department clearly was entitled to detailed information on Mary Baldwin - such as catalogs, faculty, blueprints of facilities and financial reports.

The Justice Department also had argued that it needed current data on VMI because the case is three years old. If the Justice Department's proposed plan involved VMI's admitting women, government attorneys would need to know whether VMI could accommodate them, Douglas said.

But Kiser said that information was not pertinent.

"We're not going to re-evaluate VMI," he said.

by CNB