ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, July 14, 1996 TAG: 9607150093
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LEXINGTON
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Lede
Virginia Military Institute's powerful and dedicated alumni will get two more months to look into the complexities of taking the 157-year-old public school private.
At the same time, the school's state overseers, the board of visitors, will start to hammer out a plan to take the school coed. The board is likely to decide between the two options at its next meeting, scheduled for Sept.21.
"We must come into compliance with the decision of the court, but we must do so without abandoning the standards that have made VMI great," said Bill Berry of Richmond, head of the VMI Board of Visitors. "The importance of these twin goals is self-evident. The best route to achieve them is not."
The board unanimously agreed to what Berry called "parallel paths." The action came after two days of closed-door meetings, in which the 17-member board met with lawyers, public relations consultants, VMI staff, and representatives of the VMI Alumni Association and the VMI Foundation.
Steve Fogleman, who became chairman of the private VMI Alumni Association last week, said: "These are tough, complex issues. We're going to go ahead with the work we have to do."
An eight-person committee, which includes members of VMI's alumni groups and two members of the board of visitors, has looked into going private since February. But the committee recently suspended meetings as the deadline neared for the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the six-year fight to keep women out of the VMI Corps of Cadets. On June 26, the court issued a 7-1 decision that said, in effect, that the school could no longer accept public funds without accepting women.
No program to examine coeducation has been under way at VMI, on advice of the school's attorneys, Berry has said.
The alumni association's board recently agreed to pursue the option of going private. The cost is unclear, but the school would need to come up with $10.3 million a year to replace state funding in the annual $30 million operating budget. By the same token, annual giving and income from the school's endowment, much of it donated by alumni, can reach $8.5 million.
VMI officials, addressing concerns of potential conflicts as the school nears its decision, said there is no overlap in the membership of the alumni boards and the board of visitors. But when asked if there was a divide between the alumni and the board of visitors, Berry replied: "There is no rift. ... We are allowing these agencies to continue to work to go private."
Also to be considered: whether the General Assembly would approve the sale of VMI's campus. Estimates of its worth vary, but one figure released by VMI officials sets it near $150 million.
Berry wouldn't comment on the cost to go private, except to say "it was huge."
Another hurdle is the possible threat to ROTC, which is integral to a VMI education. A Department of Defense report recommends against operating ROTC programs at schools that discriminate against women.
Because the board of visitors acts as a state agency, it cannot take the school private, Berry said. But the exact mechanism for how the school might go private is unclear, and Berry and others declined to elaborate. Presumably, legislation would be required. Deputy Attorney General Bill Hurd, who attended all of the board meetings, said the "dynamics of who taps a delegate on the shoulder" remain to be seen.
"The ultimate decision rests with the commonwealth," Berry said.
In the meantime, he said, the "issue of coeducation at VMI is not a simple one, and its implementation will require careful planning in order to serve the best interests of Virginia's young men and young women."
Six young women who have contacted the school about attending will be told that the school is still deliberating its future, VMI Superintendent Josiah Bunting III said. Although Bunting has said in recent interviews that coeducation would come in the fall of 1997, The Associated Press reported that he said he expects women to come a year later.
The Citadel, in South Carolina, the nation's only other all-male public military school, said after the VMI Supreme Court decision that it would admit women this fall.
Bunting reiterated Saturday a point he has made in the past: that "minimal change" in the school is the implication of the Supreme Court opinion, written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. This "does not mean deliberately trying to thwart or make unpleasant" a woman's experience at VMI, he said. Some have worried that the admission of women could mean the end of the boot-camp style of the freshman "rat line" experience.
LENGTH: Medium: 91 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CINDY PINKSTON/Staff. 1. The VMI Board of Visitors votesby CNBto delay any action Saturday in response to the U.S. Supreme Court
ruling last month requiring the public school to admit women. color.
2. Bill Berry, head of the VMI Board of Visitors, explains why the
decision to admit women or go private will come in September. 3. VMI
Superintendent Josiah Bunting III said women likely will be admitted
in two years.