ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, July 3, 1996 TAG: 9607030053
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: DALE EISMAN LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
The Pentagon on Tuesday underscored its efforts to end sex discrimination in the services, but ducked questions about whether women should be admitted to Virginia Military Institute, which each year provides about 100 freshly trained graduates to the officer corps.
``I don't think it would be appropriate'' for the Defense Department to advise VMI officials about whether the military would continue to operate Reserve Officer Training Corps programs at a private, all-male VMI, Undersecretary of Defense Edwin Dorn told reporters.
Dorn said the Pentagon will make no decision about ROTC's future at VMI until the institute's board of visitors has decided on coeducation. The board is to meet July 11 to discuss a Supreme Court ruling that it must either admit women or become a private school.
Because ROTC is the conduit through which VMI students move into the military, the Pentagon's position on its future at the institute could be crucial to the board's deliberations.
``Without the ROTC [program], there isn't a VMI. It's a very important part of the institute's foundation,'' Dr. Edward Miller, a VMI board member from Alexandria, said this week. ``We must have the ROTC, just as we must have academic [and] military programs.''
School and state officials have suggested that taking VMI private could cost up to $100 million. The continued existence of an ROTC program at the institute would be a key to raising that money, VMI Superintendent Josiah Bunting has said, because potential donors otherwise might doubt the school's ability to stay open.
Officials of The Citadel in Charleston, S.C., the only other all-male, state-supported military school, voted after the court ruling to admit women.
The Defense Advisory Commission on Women in the Services, a Pentagon advisory group, recommended in April that the military end ROTC at single-sex colleges. The panel reasoned that as the services move closer to full gender integration, all their officers should come from training programs where men and women have worked together.
Defense Secretary William Perry has not responded to the recommendation, however.
Though one branch of the federal government - the Justice Department - spent several million dollars in a long court battle to open VMI to women, military officials refused during the litigation to put further pressure on the institute by threatening to end its ROTC programs.
Privately, Pentagon officials suggested last year that because VMI and The Citadel had long produced high-quality officers, service leaders were loath to cut off the ROTC conduit.
Staff writer Allison Blake contributed to this story.
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