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

DATE: SUNDAY, February 6, 1994                   TAG: 9402080003
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: C3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DIVERSITY?

I wasn't sure where I was going with Shannon Faulkner, the 19-year-old who recently became the first woman to attend regular day classes at The Citadel in the 152-year history of that Charleston, S.C., institution.

Certainly I admire her spunk in challenging The Citadel's males-only tradition. (Women have attended night classes there since 1966 - 1,600 this semester - and more than 3,000 have graduated.) Faulkner is the first to sit in day classes alongside the blue-clad men. I wish her all the best.

But it also occurs to me that The Citadel, for good or ill, will not be again what it was. You can't have an all-male academy and admit women at the same time.The Citadel will change.

Should it change?Is there no place in our academic diversity for single-sex institutions? Can one argue against schools like The Citadel or Virginia Military Institute (which traditionally have catered to white males) and still make a case for women's colleges or black colleges?

I decided to ask someone who's been there.

Ernest Green, now an investment banker with Lehman Brothers in New York, was a 16-year-old kid when, as a member of the Little Rock Nine, he integrated Central High School.

What does Ernie Green think about Shannon Faulkner?

``She ought to be there,'' he says. ``While The Citadel and an all-white high school have some obvious differences, the woman is absolutely correct.''

Faulkner, like Green before her, came to school armed with a court order. The Citadel accepted her, thinking her application was from a young man, then tried to reject her on the basis of her gender. She still hasn't been admitted to the corps of cadets, but that's expected to happen soon.later this month. Green, knowing that as a boarding studentFaulkner will be lonelier than he was at Central High but knowing, too, that she's unlikely to face the physical danger he did, admires her determination.

``We live in a world where things are so interconnected, segregation in any form perpetuates disadvantage.''

I can see that, of course. I'm a little older than Ernie Green and my high-school years in Mississippi predated desegregation. I still feel cheated out of a proper education, though I fared well enough at my predominantly white college.

But then, two of my three children (with my full blessing) chose historically black colleges for their undergraduate work, and I think they profited from the experience. Both my daughters attended an all-girl high school and, as a result, got a bigger taste of school leadership, academic and political, than they otherwise might have. I think they are better off for the experience. Does Green?

``All-anything schools will increasingly be under assault, and ought to be,'' he told me. ``I think all of us are better off having interchanges in a setting that is reflective of the world we'll be entering.

``This is pretty much the point we (and the adults who led us) were trying to make in the 1950s. The contacts, the transfer of information, knowledge of the `inside game' (whatever that is) of how you succeed in a society - all these things happen largely through small informal groups, not in public and official forums.''

Green's point is easy enough when the institutions under discussion are the domain of white males, still the society's favored group. But what of those circumstances in which disadvantaged groups - minorities or women or people with special problems - withdraw, for a time, to develop the strength and courage to compete in the general society?

Ernie speaks with the assurance of the local who knows the best route to the interstate.no matter what those confusing and conflicting signs may say.

``When the going gets rough, we tend to say we want our own thing,'' he says. ``I understand that. But at some point, you have to confront all of that. I include the All-Male Academy idea proposed in Detroit, where the idea was to have a special curriculum for these inner-city black boys.''

And he emphatically includes the full cadet-corps program at The Citadel, including eating in the mess hall and sleeping in the barracks.

Green thinks she should go for it all. ``We keep saying that people deserve a place at the table. Well they also want a full plate, not just a child's portion, when they get there. That's what the recent debate over women in combat is really about - whether to accept women as the full-fledged equals of men.''

Very persuasive, even if some of it still seems a little too self-assured, like the local guide who keeps assuring you that you ``can't miss it.''

Experience tells you that you f+icano miss it. But it also tells you that you're almost always better off listening to someone who's been there.

Ernie Green's been there, and I'm listening.

\ Washington Post Writers Group