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

DATE: THURSDAY, February 3, 1994                   TAG: 9402030050
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

VMI TELLS PLANS FOR WOMEN

But the women who enter the Virginia Women's Leadership Institute, the state's answer to the Justice Department's sex discrimination suit against VMI, will attend "Saturday Seminars" six times a year to talk about multiculturalism, time management, communication skills, or conflict resolution. They'll plan a leadership speaker series from the Virginia Women's Leadership Institute House, and take part in community service.

They'll join ROTC, rappel off cliffs, and run obstacle courses - when they're not playing golf or tennis, or practicing varsity sports. They'll live communally for two years of their schooling, bonding as a group, with lots of rules for freshmen.

The plan for the leadership institute, which will be filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Roanoke and goes on trial Wednesday, calls for extra math and foreign language classes and a range of group activities - some run by an upperclassmen. In proceedings expected to last four or more days, Judge Jackson Kiser will decide if the plan brings VMI's illegal, all-male admission policy in line with the law.

"We're not at all imagining anything like a 24-hour VMI military setting," said Jim Lott, dean at Mary Baldwin College, where the institute will be quartered. "And a lot of this will develop as the program gets established and moves along.

"We're emphasizing a setting that is, particularly in the freshman year, very controlled, very disciplined, and [in] which the order of a student's daily life is imposed externally. And then, as she moves through the next three years, the student takes on greater freedom, greater responsibility, and is held accountable for meeting the elements of that responsibility," he said.

It's been well over a year since the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sent the high-profile VMI sex discrimination case back to U.S. District Court, giving VMI four choices: admit women, go private, create a parallel program for women, or come up with another creative option.

In September, VMI, blessed by then-Gov. Douglas Wilder and the boards of visitors at VMI and Mary Baldwin, unveiled its plan. VMI becomes part of the Virginia Corps of Cadets, with branches at Mary Baldwin and Virginia Tech. The state appropriation that underwrites tuition for VMI cadets - $2.3 million this year - would be spread among the three groups.

The private VMI Foundation will spend $2.9 million setting up the women's leadership institute, outlined in the September papers.

The Justice Department, meanwhile, has not budged from its position: VMI must admit women. Last week, a government lawyer called the September plan "a moving target" - constantly changing. "A skeleton, a sketch," said attorney Michael Maurer, saying the government could never try the case if the details kept changing.

Kiser overruled the government, and paved the way for the fleshed-out plan to be considered in court next week.

"We know the court will decide as it will whether the program meets [the constitutional] test. We wanted similar outcomes as VMI, and a ROTC component, but, beyond that, [the plan] was really a culmination of what we do on a daily basis," said Mary Baldwin dean of students Heather Wilson, who, with Lott, joined several teachers on the task force that developed the plan.

Here are some specifics:

Leadership students must meet Mary Baldwin's curriculum requirements, with a few extras: calculus and statistics, two language classes and computer literacy. Also required is a leadership "externship," wherein the student works with a person who has the job she thinks she would like to have in a decade.

Eight semesters of physical and health education. Self-defense and one-on-one sports will be required, as will a twice-weekly Cooperative Confidence Building program, billed as "analogous to the VMI "rat challenge." Freshmen will face rigorous "physical and mental challenges" such as rappelling, directed by an upperclassman.

Military-style requirements include ROTC, held at Mary Baldwin or VMI, and close supervision in residence halls. For example, in an effort to make the women work out their own differences, freshmen will not be allowed to change roommates. Spot room inspections can be expected. A separate leadership institute house will be home to upperclass women for at least a year of their stay.

Students will not wear uniforms, as they do at VMI, except to ROTC classes.

Even if the plan goes down in court, the widespread publicity will help Mary Baldwin move forward and set up the plan on its own, said Wilson.

Asked if she thought VMI should admit women, she said, "I think it would have been a very bad experience for the women."