ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, June 29, 1996 TAG: 9607010058
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
note: lede
Virginia Military Institute Superintendent Josiah Bunting III said Friday that in his "heart of hearts," he thinks ultimately the college will admit women.
The women would come in the fall of 1997 - after "we work through everything," he said. VMI advocates, including an alumni committee, are still weighing whether to take the school private in the wake of this week's 7-1 Supreme Court decision ordering VMI either to admit women or give up public funds.
The college will know whether it will go private or accept women by fall, Bunting said. "I see it all very plainly and clearly. I'm very conscious of what we have to do when the dust settles: to admit women or to raise 10 zillion dollars and keep it all male."
Bunting spoke hours before The Citadel in South Carolina bowed to the court and voted to admit women. It's been only a year since the nation's only other all-male military academy fiercely opposed the admission of Shannon Faulkner. VMI's superintendent issued a response following the Citadel's announcement saying VMI's board would decide what to do at a July 12-13 meeting of its own Board of Visitors.
Aside from the legal issue of whether VMI could go private are substantial practical hurdles. VMI would have to raise a minimum endowment of $100 million to generate the $10 million annual operating funds needed to replace state funding, Bunting said. The General Assembly and the governor would have to approve the plan.
Two other huge reasons may prompt major donors to hesitate before giving VMI millions to go private: The U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Justice.
The Defense Department still awaits Secretary William Perry's response to an April 30 committee recommendation that the agency operate ROTC programs "only at institutions of higher learning ... that do not discriminate in student admissions on the basis of gender." VMI is an important source of the country's 7,000 ROTC-trained officers commissioned in the armed forces each year. In 1994, 94 VMI grads were commissioned, fourth highest among ROTC programs.
Also remaining to be seen: Whether the Justice Department, which filed the sex-discrimination suit against VMI in 1990, would sue again if it viewed an attempt to go private as evading the Constitution. Legally, the school could be liable for such action, lawyers said this week. A Justice Department spokesman said he didn't know what the agency might do.
"I think the resources are out there to make possible an attempt to go private, but I am not certain whether the people who have those resources, particularly the large amounts of up-front money [needed], would in this particular climate be persuaded they should jump in," Bunting said.
"I don't want to say they're not devoted friends," Bunting said. But the agencies potentially present "the kinds of obstacles that tend to make people reluctant to devote large amounts of cash to causes."
Influential VMI alumni will meet in Richmond over the weekend in a closed gathering of the VMI Alumni Association board to debate the ruling. Whether they make a recommendation to the governing Board of Visitors remains to be seen, said association president Edwin Cox III.
After the VMI governing board meets next month, a campus group likely will be formed to look into how to admit women, Bunting said. The school prepared no plan for going coed during the court case because their attorneys advised "that was not a good approach while the litigation was pending," Rector William Berry said this week.
"Because of the timing of this event, we think we have time to investigate our options and come up with a reasonable plan," Berry said.
Attorneys, state officials, and others interviewed this week all say the school probably can wait another year to admit women since the school year starts in August.
Bunting said the VMI admissions office is telling any women who call to inquire that "we will comply on Monday immediately after the board meeting July 13." One woman called the admissions office this week to ask about attending VMI, which greets a class of 420 male freshmen, or "rats," this fall.
Bunting, an ardent supporter of VMI's single-sex status, is the former president of all-male Hampden-Sydney College. He left in 1987 to lead the private Lawrenceville School in New Jersey through its first year of coeducation. Last summer, VMI's board hired him.
"If there is a college in this country whose ethos is bound up in its single-genderness more than VMI's, I cannot imagine what it would be," Bunting said.
Symbolic of that is the open barracks, where curtain-less rooms look out onto an open courtyard.
The barracks would be altered in some way to accommodate women, Bunting said. If the first class of women is small, they may be housed together nearby in that first year. Also, the arrival of women will mean new hires in the dean's office, the infirmary, and admissions office.
As the fury of speculation over what VMI will do continued Friday, two days after the high court's strongly worded ruling, Bunting said he's "trying hard to lower the emotional pitch" that has heightened this week.
"But I know when we come out of this ... I'm going to have to be steward" whether the school admits women or goes private.
"I love this school more than anything in my life except my family," said Bunting, VMI class of '63, "and I'm determined to do that the best I can."
Virginian Pilot reporter Dale Eisman contributed to this story.
LENGTH: Long : 103 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: FILE/1995 Virginia Military Institute Superintendentby CNBJosiah Bunting talks to cadets in the Virginia Women's Institute
for Leadership program at Mary Baldwin. color