Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 13, 1994 TAG: 9402130115
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It was common wisdom: Women should be kept away "from the things for which they are not suited," said Michael S. Kimmel, a sociologist from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Since he's spent a decade studying the history of women trying to break down gender barriers in education, Kimmel couldn't help but feel some deja vu as he reviewed current efforts to keep women out of all-male Virginia Military Institute.
In another long day in court Saturday, the Justice Department continued to sharpen its case against what it considers to be a separate and not-so-equal plan. One of its witnesses, a gender role expert, even testified that the proposed Virginia Women's Institute for Leadership is based on the false notion that the learning patterns of men and women can be lumped into meaningful "averages."
The average differences between the way men and women learn are "trivial" compared to the vast individual differences among members of either sex, said Carol Nagy Jacklin, a professor at the University of Southern California.
VMI and Virginia are trying to show that the proposed women's institute would give women leadership training that would prepare them for life in the same way the 155-year-old military school prepares young men. Mandatory ROTC; courses in leadership, advanced science and math courses; added physical fitness; up to two years of group living and a range of responsibilities are hallmarks of the new plan.
The publicly funded leadership institute, to be launched at private, all-women's Mary Baldwin College, is tailored to a 1992 appeals court ruling. The court overturned U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser's 1991 decision in favor of VMI, and found the public college's all-male admission policy to be illegal.
Now, Kiser must decide if the plan is the "creative, parallel option" the appeals court said would legalize VMI's policy and conform to the equal protection clause of the Constitution's 14th Amendment.
The Justice Department is trying to discredit the plan by showing the lack of traditional military training and tradition at pastoral Mary Baldwin, the "gender stereotypes" assumed in the leadership plan, and an inequality between the education found at VMI and that at Mary Baldwin.
"With all due respect to Mary Baldwin College, the institution is not quite as visible. It's a smaller liberal arts college that does not enjoy the prestige of VMI. [Leadership institute graduates] would not automatically enjoy the same level of benefit as a graduate of VMI surely would get," said Clifton Conrad, a professor of higher education at the University of Wisconsin.
Conrad compared the two programs at the Justice Department's request. While the two share goals for their students, such as developing character, he found that the plan for women failed to spell out detailed methods used to reach its goals.
Conrad also looked at the methods VMI uses to reach its five goals. One example is military training. While the women's plan counts on ROTC to accomplish that mission, a military atmosphere "pervades" VMI, from the austere, military post-like campus, to the famed "rat line," the boot camp-style life of VMI freshmen, he said. The "rat line" breaks down individuality so the class can re-bond as a group.
The women "will not have had the opportunity to live, in the fullest sense, the military life," Conrad said.
As if to drive home its point - that women should be admitted to VMI - the Justice Department put a female Desert Storm veteran from Virginia on the stand. Col. Tamara Frezell of Petersburg said she grew up dreaming of a military career, and never considered anything but her alma mater, the United States Military Academy at West Point.
West Point is a bit of a sore spot in this trial: Neither side is supposed to retry issues, such as life at the nation's co-educational service academies, that were considered the first time Kiser heard the case. Saturday's testimony by the man who monitors the academy's corps of cadets, Col. James Siket, was stricken from the trial record at the request of VMI attorneys.
Also Saturday, VMI's attorneys picked at witnesses' credentials for judging single-gender programs or curriculum development. They even adopted a tactic found in recent political campaigns.
Jacklin was asked if she was a member of the National Organization for Women and the ACLU.
Defense attorney Robert Patterson pointed out that Kimmel is the national spokesman for a group called NOMAS - the "pro-feminist" National Organization for Men Against Sexism.
The irony? In the first two days of the trial, VMI's star witness was pioneering feminist Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, who lists on her own resume a former three-year stint on the editorial board of a publication called "Marxist Perspectives."
The trial reconvenes at 9:30 a.m. Monday.
by CNB