ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, July 10, 1996 TAG: 9607100059
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
This week's meeting of Virginia Military Institute's governing board is more likely to produce study committees than decisions about whether the school will admit women or go private.
A choice between the only two options left in the wake of last month's Supreme Court decision is unlikely before the board's Sept. 21 meeting, board of visitors Chairman Bill Berry of Richmond said.
"Obviously, we should make the decision when we have the information available," Berry said.
Although an eight-person subcommittee has looked into going private for months, the school did not examine coeducation under advice of counsel, Berry said. That leaves many questions, including the "complete spectrum" about how the school would go coed.
"I don't think anybody would suggest zero changes," he said.
Berry also said that turning VMI into a private college faces huge hurdles.
"As you examine privatization, the more you know about it, the more difficult it is. I don't think we've found anything impossible. Difficult. Sort of an initial reaction [is], let's go private. Piece of cake. It's not a piece of cake," he said.
Berry speculated on the conditions in which women might be admitted.
"We're going to make somebody mad regardless of what choice we make. I think this attitude that has been attributed to some, 'Shave her head and put her in the rat line and she won't last long' ... in my opinion, that is a tiny minority and one that is disappearing rapidly.
"If we admit women, we have to do it right. Do it in VMI style and create a program where women will succeed, not one designed to fail," Berry said.
This week's three-day meeting, to be held almost entirely in closed session, starts Thursday evening. On the agenda: briefings from VMI attorneys, a report from the subcommittee that has looked into going private, and a report from a public relations group regarding Supreme Court decision.
Meanwhile, key alumni still are in favor of going private, said the Roanoke chapter president of the VMI alumni association.
"I think there's a strong sentiment," Al Soltis said. "I don't think there's any doubt about it."
But Soltis also said he doubts alumni would challenge whatever the board of visitors decides.
"I think the board of visitors will now analyze the facts as best they can and make the best decision they can."
Outside the inner alumni circle, calls for admitting women are increasing.
"I think it's probably in the best interests of VMI to proceed with an orderly program for the admission of women," Roanoke alumnus Marshall Mundy said. "It seems to me there are a lot of problems with regard to the going private route, which include the probability of litigation that would take us into the next century."
Potential plaintiffs range from the U.S. Department of Justice to taxpayer groups that might object if the state sold the VMI property, Mundy said. There also remains a high-level Department of Defense recommendation against letting the school retain ROTC, a key component of its program, if women are shut out.
"I would also have some concern about the result if VMI were to go private," Mundy said. "Is it ... going to become a much more exclusive school, where admission would be denied the mixture of students from all walks of life?"
If VMI accepts women, changes would start with simple housing alterations and would go on to the elimination of the adversative "rat" line, Berry said. As others have said in the days since Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg read the majority opinion, Berry noted "in some places, she seemed to be leading us in the direction of very few changes."
Mundy, for instance, joined other VMI alumni when he said "VMI standards should not be compromised in any way."
On the other hand, Berry said, the service academies have made changes since admitting women.
At the Naval Academy in Annapolis, the huge dormitory known as Bancroft Hall already had showers and sinks in all the rooms when women arrived in the mid-'70s, spokeswoman Karen Myers said. "All we had to do was designate some of the toilets for women," she said.
VMI alumni also have worried about having to change physical education requirements for women. The academy has calculated requirements such that both sexes expend the same amount of energy, while taking into account physical differences, Myers said.
As part of their semester fitness requirements, for instance, Annapolis men run 1 1/2 miles in 10 minutes and 30 seconds while women run the same distance in 12 minutes and 40 seconds. At VMI, where running also is only one part of the fitness requirement, men must cover the same distance in 12 minutes.
Cabell Brand of Salem, a VMI alumnus, said he believes it's "a small group of influential alumni" looking into going private.
"When they think about all the ramifications, I can't believe they'll want to do it. You can't win in that. It's absolutely a ridiculous way to go. ... I'm glad it's over. We fought the fight and lost."
"I think if VMI goes private, they will self-destruct."
Edwin "Pete" Cox III, the Richmond-based alumnus who just stepped down from the presidency of the alumni association. said most alumni, "despite what they like to think, will listen and apply the rule of reason to what they hear."
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