ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, June 30, 1996 TAG: 9607010071
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From staff and wire reports
As the Virginia Military Institute weighs its response to the Supreme Court ruling to admit women, it may well observe closely The Citadel's experience.
The Charleston, S.C., military school announced Friday that it will swing open the doors of its corps of cadets to women immediately. Now comes the hard part: turning a 153-year, all-male tradition into a modern coeducational college in less than two months.
Jimmy Jones, chairman of The Citadel's board, said the new admissions policy probably will include dress codes, physical standards and codes of conduct. He said the board does not intend to micromanage the changes.
Col. Joseph Trez, commandant of cadets, has drafted an implementation plan for the corps, Jones said. However, the proposal has not been approved, so Citadel officials refused to comment on it.
Calvin Lyons, the school's vice president for business and finance, said making The Citadel coed could be expensive, and the college may be forced to ask legislators for more money.
Attorneys on both sides of the long-fought legal battle said any plans probably will have to be approved by U.S. District Judge C. Weston Houck.
``We won't hesitate to go to court if we think that the program that's suggested by The Citadel is inadequate,'' said Henry Weisburg, one of the lawyers who represented Shannon Faulkner in her fight to march in the corps.
Weisburg said he is confident at least one woman will enter the state-supported college when freshmen report Aug. 24. That woman was not identified.
VMI received an average of 200 inquiries each year from potential, female students - before last week's Supreme Court ruling. But no one knows how many women might actually want to attend VMI - or how VMI will go about accommodating them.
VMI Superintendent Josiah Bunting III noted this week that the decision's author, former women's rights attorney Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, said "in a kind of backhanded way `what you are is admirable, women who deserve the chance at it - go out and recruit them and don't change.'"
"In effect, I think she is telling us, when women come here, we should retain the full force and full vigor of the adversative system. That's what they want."
About the notorious VMI "rat line," Ginsberg wrote: "Tormenting and punishing, the rat line bonds new cadets to their fellow sufferers and, when they have completed the 7-month experience, to their former tormentors."
That is why, attorneys and VMI officials interviewed this week said, the school should be able to wait until 1997 to admit women. Transfer students would miss out on most of their "rat" training, considered key to the VMI education.
But any discussion of admitting women is still strictly hypothetical. VMI's Board of Visitors won't decide until the close of its July 13 meeting whether to admit women or go private.
Bill Berry, the rector - or president - of the board said this week that although a VMI committee has been looking into going private, the school has prepared no plans for admitting women.
Bunting, who presided over the same change when he headed private Lawrenceville School in New Jersey in 1987, said there would be relatively few changes to the post, or campus, in its first year of coeducation.
"There is some thought that in the first year, if there were six women, they'd be housed in a building 100 yards away" from the barracks, he said.
But many observers say a "critical mass" of women should be admitted to VMI at one time so that they can support each other during the first years of coeducation. What that number should be is not known. The school's enrollment stands near 1,200, and 430 freshmen are expected this fall. Ordinarily, 23 percent of freshmen drop out during the tough, first year, said VMI spokesman Mike Strickler.
A recruitment push aimed at VMI's traditional, male applicants has boosted inquiries to the Lexington college to 6,700 for the fall of '97 - a 300 percent jump over last year.
As for The Citadel, its admissions office ought to aggressively seek out women students, according to one of Faulkner's attorneys.
``With aggressive recruitment, both by working on the list of people who have already expressed an interest and with more broad-scale recruitment, they could get a good number of women for admission in August,'' Weisburg said.
He also suggested that the school should go beyond trying to lure incoming freshmen; college transfers, especially from ROTC programs, should be recruited for the fall.
Citadel officials also should contact the 185 women who have expressed interest or asked for applications, and scholarship money could be set aside for female cadets, Weisburg said.
LENGTH: Medium: 85 linesby CNB