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

DATE: TUESDAY, August 29, 1995                   TAG: 9508290012
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

1ST DAY HAD GREAT SIGNIFICANCE

As if going off to college for the first time isn't weird enough, imagine having a network producer intervene as the nice lady from the college hands over your room key.

Hold it!

Just a sec - she needs to get this shot.

So went the opening of the Virginia Women's Institute for Leadership at Mary Baldwin College last week, as parents picked their way past the crush of national press as they moved their daughters into the dorm. Believe me, it was a crush.

We still don't know if the new program is legally OK as an alternative to admitting women to Virginia Military Institute, but the latest from the courts is this: Open the program by the fall of '95; maybe the Supreme Court will hear the case this winter.

Mary Baldwin would have been remiss if it had not opened its doors to as much press as the situation could stand. The program is under a microscope, and the folks at this small women's college are savvy enough to know that.

They also know they could lose funding from VMI's foundation and the state if the court rules the program is not an adequate substitute for the rigorous military regimen and education at the state-supported military college. In that case they will be left with what could be a very good program opened amid the kind of publicity and hype for which most folks only dream. So there's something in it for Mary Baldwin no matter how this case turns out.

At the same time - whew! What a scene!

I was there as a reporter, covering a story of national significance. But at one point, watching a parent pull out an Instamatic to shoot a family photo (as opposed to the high-tech lenses sported by professional photographers), I gave myself a little talking-to. These are 18-year-olds. They are young, some scared, and their parents are, too. Today is a rite of passage, like getting married or giving birth.

Sure, I'm here to do a story. But I also can be respectful.

I thought back to my first day of college. Like most of the VWIL students, I had two roommates as school opened. One seemed pretty mousy and I was pretty sure we probably wouldn't become best friends. (We didn't.)

The other seemed more like me, a wee tad more inclined toward dipping her big toe into the occasional vat of trouble. Somehow we ended up with only two of us that first semester.

Other than that, I really can't remember much about my first day of college.

At Virginia Tech and Radford University right now, I am sure the first days of freshmandom have passed with varying degrees of angst or elation for the hundreds loosed from their parents and their hometowns for the first time.

They are the lucky ones - who got to shed those parting tears that first day without having to do so on the evening news.

by CNB