Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 11, 1994 TAG: 9402160004
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GERALD P. GUZI
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
To protect life, a pro-life activist takes a life. To enact ``freedom of choice,'' pro-choice activists would deny choice to unborn children, fathers, parents, states and society. To require women's admittance at male schools, some would eliminate the opportunity for others to attend single-sex institutions.
The Justice Department says women must be allowed into Virginia Military Institute, that it is unconstitutional for the state to provide something where women cannot go.
This is like demanding that women must be allowed into a men's restroom, if the state built it.
VMI's mission has been to train and build educated young men of honor, character and integrity. If you know graduates of VMI, you know it has succeeded in its mission. It shouldn't have to respond to the Justice Department's attack. The people of Virginia should.
We have provided an institution where young men can receive a single-sex college education with military training. It has fulfilled its charge admirably.
Some compare the non-admittance of women at VMI to discrimination against blacks in our country.
People don't list reasons, then make a decision; they make a decision, then list the reasons.
The people who made the decision they want women forced into VMI have listed as one of their reasons this attempted analogy to racial discrimination. Exclusion, discrimination, separate-but-equal are some of the words used to make their point. Sounds plausible, but The analogy just doesn't wash.
Overt racial discrimination in America had as its core disease ill will towards ``colored'' people. This core disease manifested itself in the systemic symptoms of exclusion, discrimination and ``separate but equal'' facilities. And separate lunch counters, separate waiting rooms, the back of the bus, and more, and worse ... all as part of a lifelong cycle of segregation and discrimination because of the core ill-will.
I can't know or speak for blacks about how it was then or how it is now. But I know to compare the non-admittance of women at VMI to this country's past treatment of blacks is to trivialize that treatment.
How does this compare? Is there a core disease of a dislike of women at VMI? By the faculty? By the students? By the parents who send them there? By VMI's board? By the commonwealth of Virginia? By the citizens of Virginia? By whom?
Mothers send their sons to VMI. VMI cadets date young women from surrounding colleges. VMI graduates marry and become good family men, and work with women. They seem to have a healthy life-long affection, respect for and association with women. Where is the core disease, the core dislike for women?
There isn't one. But for this time in their lives, these young men are to be educated and disciplined, and to grow, in an all-male system.
Young men learn, train, grow under the guidance of faculty and the discipline of military training without turning their attention to young women. And young women more readily speak up, take different roles, become leaders in an all-female setting.
The real advantage of VMI is not the military training (a small percentage of graduates goes career military). Rather, the end goal is the training and building of educated young men of character and integrity. The discipline of military training is the means to that end. Leadership training tailored to young women should be the means to a similar end goal. For them, military training should be optional.
VMI has many reasons for not wanting to admit women: tradition, a proven successful system, practical problems. But it's not really up to VMI to decide. It should be the commonwealth's decision whether all-male VMI still fits its goals and needs. It may not even be up to the commonwealth.
To protect rights, there are times when the federal government and the Justice Department f+ishouldo step in: where there is a compelling case of an unconstitutional presence of a core problem of ill will and a system of discrimination based upon it. (As they did during the struggle for civil rights in the south during the Kennedy years.)
There are also times when the federal government itself tramples state and individual rights by extending its tentacles into our lives in a well-meaning but misguided top-down dictating of how we should live.
Which is the Justice Department's role in this case? Dictating.
For example, Judge Jackson Kiser ruled Nov. 9, 1993, that Justice Department lawyers could present a response to the Mary Baldwin plan but ordered that their response could not be simply to admit women to VMI. On Nov. 15, 1993, the Justice Department ignored the U.S. District Court judge and did respond by demanding simply to admit women to VMI. For doing so, the Justice Department got press and the willing national media's publicity for its cause, but lawyers and judges should pass along this question: ``If the U.S. Justice Department doesn't have to listen to its judge, why should any of us?''
The Justice Department has complained that VMI changed and shaped the plan to provide a special program for women at Mary Baldwin College. If the Justice Department goal were truly to see that women have a special opportunity in Virginia, wouldn't it be glad the details of a special program for women in Virginia are taking shape?
Is its goal truly to see that women have equal opportunity, or has it become narrow-mindedly focused simply on winning its case?
Has VMI done wrong? No. But there remains this question: Does an injustice exist in Virginia's providing a single-sex college education with leadership training for men, and not for women? I think yes.
It would be foolish for women to go into a men's restroom just to prove there's no place they cannot go. But it would be wrong for the state to build restrooms for men and none for women. Far removed from the Justice Department of the Kennedy years that truly fought to break a life-long cycle of discrimination, this Justice Department gives the appearance of yielding to the shrill voices of a special interest group, much like the parent who yields to a child who insistently whines that he wants to go where he can't. If there are feminists who dream of one day straddling urinals in a men's rest room, can this Justice Department and the ACLU (``Liberty in the defense of extremism is no vice'') be far behind?
Separate programs for single-sex education are just, because there is no ill intent. No dislike. No ill will. No ill intent, no ill results.
Single-sex education works. VMI knows that. So do Hollins, Mary Baldwin, Sweet Briar and Randolph-Macon women's colleges, all of which filed with the court in support of VMI. As did Southern Virginia, and Wells, and Saint Mary's women's colleges. As did the Washington Women's Information Network, a large group of professional women. They all see that single-sex education works. The ones who don't see are some feminists and this Justice Department, who instead of having a vision of pure justice, eagerly seek the creation of injustices.
VMI has gone to great lengths to protect its system and tradition. More power to it for fighting for its system and its beliefs. VMI should be allowed to return to its mission of turning out educated young men of character, and the remaining steps to build and provide a single-sex college education with leadership training for women should be taken up by the commonwealth and its citizens.
\ Gerald P. Guzi, a Virginia Tech graduate, is a computer consultant in Roanoke.
by CNB