ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, January 1, 1996 TAG: 9601020133
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: LUCILLE PONTE
IN 1996, the Supreme Court will decide whether the nation will turn the clock back some 100 years to an era of horse-drawn buggies, whale-bone corsets, and "whites only" accommodations.
This month, the court hears arguments in a public-education case challenging the revival of the 1896 concept of separate but equal. The court soundly rejected this pernicious notion more than 40 years ago in the landmark Brown decision. In Brown, the Supreme Court determined that separate is inherently unequal for race in public education, but has yet to hand down a similar mandate for gender.
The current dispute involves the commonwealth of Virginia's decision to set up a separate all-female cadet program at a private women's college rather than integrate the imperious halls of the all-male Virginia Military Institute.
For more than 150 years, VMI's vision has been to educate and develop male cadets as "citizen-soldiers." The intertwining of the words "citizen" and "soldier" represents the historical view that the obligation of military service is a hallmark of manhood, giving rise to the enjoyment of the full rights and status of citizenship. Historically, women and people of color were denied roles in military service and training as reflective of their subordinate social and legal status.
It is not surprising that the only two all-male public educational institutions in the nation, VMI and the Citadel in South Carolina, are military training programs. Many believe that the military is a man's world - just ask the folks at the Tailhook Convention or the cadets who cheered Shannon Faulkner's departure from the Citadel.
Keeping VMI and the Citadel all-male only serves to reinforce these stereotypical views and to devalue the achievements of military women who have served and been killed, injured and captured in our nation's battles. For nearly 20 years, the federal service academies have been coeducational, in line with the continuing integration of the armed forces - a reality that VMI cannot disregard in preparing its cadets for leadership roles.
We have a powerful hankering for the past. VMI supporters point to the importance of preserving its all-male tradition. Yet tradition is often a code word for retaining a discriminatory status quo that keeps women and people of color in their "proper place." Continuing to bar women from VMI effectively excludes female cadets not only from prestigious military leadership training, but from the elite and powerful VMI network of alumni in politics and business.
Aside from calls for tradition, some VMI boosters clamor about defending the value of single-gender education. Where were the same voices when the remaining Virginia state colleges for women were made coeducational in the 1960s? How do VMI supporters explain their total silence for more than 30 years on the protection of single-gender opportunities for women in public education?
Many all-female private colleges have not been taken in by VMI's newfound interest in women's education. Some 26 of these colleges, along with certain women's groups, have petitioned the court to strike down VMI's discriminatory admissions policy and its segregationist response.
Most of these petitioners recognize that all-female institutions were founded in response to the denial of adequate public and private higher education for women. These educators and advocates realize that any acceptance of separate but equal for gender means that women will end up getting the short end of the stick in public education. And you don't have to go back to the 1890s to find plenty of examples.
Take the jewel of the Virginia higher education system, the venerable University of Virginia, which only began to admit female students in the 1970s after the filing of a class-action lawsuit. In approving of that gender integration plan, the court determined that Virginia's all-female colleges were no match for the diverse educational programs and unparalleled prestige of the all-male University of Virginia.
Unfortunately, in the VMI controversy, the lower courts balked at demanding its integration. However, their decisions offer clear evidence that the state's separate and all-female program is substantially inferior to VMI as to facilities, endowment, faculty, degree offerings, funding and reputation.
Today, students desiring a single-sex education already have numerous options in the private sector. These days privatization is the favorite buzzword of conservatives. If VMI wants to retain its all-male status, it should follow an earlier court suggestion to become private and pay its own way. This change should not be difficult to achieve, since VMI has one of the highest levels of endowment per student in the nation. It would have been a better use of alumni resources to have redirected the costs of litigating this dispute to weaning VMI off the public trough.
As our country continues to roll back opportunities for women and minorities, let us hope the Supreme Court does not take us all the way back to the 1890s. You know, those days when there were no women or people of color on the bench.
Lucille M. Ponte is a law professor at Bentley College in Waltham, Mass.
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