Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 12, 1994 TAG: 9402120191
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
She sits and answers questions patiently, tilting her head a bit as if to focus more precisely on what she wants to be known about her.
Then again, Hudson, an 18-year-old Virginia Tech freshman who wrote a letter to Virginia Military Institute four years ago asking for information about how to apply, has been through all of this before.
That was three years ago during the first VMI-Justice Department trial in 1991. News people wanted to know everything they could about the 15-year-old girl whom department lawyers kept referring to as one of the women who could find a home at VMI if only it would open its doors to her.
That was interesting, considering that Hudson has never heard word one from the Justice Department directly.
"I have no idea" how the Justice Department found out about the letter, Hudson said. "I don't hear anything except from the press."
Thursday, The Associated Press and two television stations contacted her. Friday, this newspaper and The New York Times wanted the story.
When Hudson was a freshman in high school, she wrote a letter to VMI asking for information. She thought she wanted a military career. She also wrote to the Army and Navy academies at West Point, N.Y., and Annapolis, Md., she said.
In her letter to VMI, she wrote, "I am aware of your longstanding reputation as a military school for men, I would like to demonstrate that women, and in particular me, can make a distinct contribution to your current dedication to develop young people.
"To exclude women from this experience because of their sex and not for their performance or competency, is greatly disturbing."
She asked for admission literature and a chance to apply.
"I thought they would at least send me some information," she said. VMI didn't, although they acknowledged receiving her correspondence.
When the first trial began in 1991, the media descended upon her. Justice Department lawyers brought up a letter from a girl who wanted to get into VMI, they said.
So she was not unprepared when the same thing happened on what reporters call a "slow news day" during the second day of the trial this week.
This time, the lawyers asked witnesses, "What would you say to Jackie Jones?" - the false name they used to humanize the blackened-out signature at the bottom of her letter. The news media wanted to know what the real Jackie Jones would say.
Thing is, while Hudson was running cross-country, cheerleading and holding class office on her way to graduating with honors from Spotsylvania High School last year, her desire to enter the military waned.
Now, she wants to work for the CIA - "maybe spying instead of shooting people" - and perhaps later enter politics, she said. She majors in political science at Tech, and is not in its Corps of Cadets. The only other place she applied was at the College of William and Mary.
Though she sees herself as a bystander drawn into this case and has some sympathy for VMI's position, she stands on the side of the Justice Department.
"The way I see it, the people associated with that school, they have so much pride in it, I can understand them wanting to keep their traditions," she said.
Still, "I think women would like to be a part of that. Even if I'm not directly affected, there are others."
As long as VMI is state-funded, it has no right to say women couldn't hack the rigors of the cadets' lifestyle. Nor should it be directing women's applications elsewhere, she said.
The Mary Baldwin proposal isn't enough either, she said.
"They really shouldn't be making those decisions for us," she said, ". . . as long as we're paying the tab."
And she denies that she, or the long-unidentified woman who initially complained to the Justice Department about VMI policy, or the 350 women that department lawyers say have expressed interest in VMI over the last two years, are just rabble-rousing or in the debate to get attention.
"These aren't just little girls writing letters to start trouble," she said. "These are real women who want to change things.
"They don't want to ruin the school. . . . They just respect it enough to want to be a part of it."
by CNB