Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 1, 1994 TAG: 9405010041
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Siding both with VMI and the state, U.S. District Court Judge Jackson Kiser ruled that a proposed, publicly funded women's leadership institute at private Mary Baldwin College in Staunton is a constitutional way for taxpayer-supported VMI to remain all-male.
The program, called the Virginia Women's Institute for Leadership, will offer women training aimed at producing the same type of "citizen-soldier" produced by VMI. Kiser asked that the program begin in the fall of 1995, and ordered six-month progress updates with the court.
At the leadership institute, women will live together in structured housing for two of their four years in school; take advanced science and math classes; be required to participate in rigorous physical education; and participate in an array of community service projects.
The program is being watched in South Carolina as a way to keep that state's public, all-male military school, The Citadel, all-male, even as a woman completes her first semester of classes there while her legal quest to become a full-fledged cadet is pending in the courts.
The constitutionality of the so-called "Mary Baldwin plan" was the subject of a week-long trial in February before Kiser. The case was returned to Kiser's courtroom by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond. Two years ago, the appeals court overturned an earlier decision by Kiser that found VMI's all-male admissions policy to be legal. In their decision, the appellate judges directed VMI to go private, admit women, or come up with an alternate parallel, or creative, plan.
While VMI and the state have argued that the plan gives Virginia diversity in higher education and preserves single-sex education, the U.S. Justice Department, which first brought suit against VMI in 1990, maintains that a public, all-male school is simply illegal.
During the February trial, the justice department stressed that the program in no way reflects the military education found at 150-year-old VMI, and therefore cannot be constitutional.
But Kiser thought differently.
"If VMI marches to the beat of a drum, then Mary Baldwin marches to the melody of a fife, and when the march is over, both will have arrived at the same destination," Kiser wrote in his most recent opinion in the long-running case.
Late Saturday, Justice Department attorney Judith Keith said she had not read the decision, and could have no comment under department policy. Likewise, Mary Baldwin College President Cynthia Tyson said she could not comment, having not seen the decision.
Also reached at home late Saturday, VMI Superintendent Gen. John Knapp said he was reading the decision and referred calls to college spokesman Mike Strickler.
"We're very pleased with the decision," said Strickler. "It's a victory for single-sex education, both for men and women."
In his findings, Kiser quoted the appeals court, which said it remanded the case "to give the commonwealth the responsibility to select a course it chooses," so long as the equal protection clause of the constitution is satisfied. Kiser went on to say that a "separate but equal" standard obviously would fail, because "as the U.S. pointed out time and time again during the trial, even if all else were equal between VMI and the VWIL, the VWIL program cannot supply those intangible qualities of history, reputation, tradition and prestige that VMI has amassed over the years."
However, that test does not apply in this case, Kiser said in justifying his decision. "One must assume that the 4th Circuit did not assign the commonwealth an impossible task when it suggested that the commonwealth was free to establish a `parallel program' or devise `creative options or combinations.'
"It would be unrealistic to think that the 4th Circuit was requiring an exercise in futility."
Meanwhile, back on the Lexington campus where the first class of cadets to have spent their entire VMI careers under the cloud of litigation are about to graduate, the debate goes on.
"I believe in equal rights," said Roanoke senior Scott Towsend, who was happy to hear about Kiser's decision. "If they run (VWIL) like they run it here, women will get the same experience.
"The only honest way to get an opinion is for the taxpayers of Virginia to vote on it," he said.
The case is widely expected to be appealed, perhaps all the way to the Supreme Court.
Staff writer Erika Bolstad contributed to this report
by CNB