ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, July 31, 1996 TAG: 9607310050
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: RICHMOND
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
MEMO: shorter in Metro edition
When Texas A&M University integrated women into its corps of cadets in 1974, it made the mistake of not housing the women directly with the corps.
Moving women cadets into each unit later "really helped them to accept one another," said Maj. Rebecca Ray, special assistant to the commandant of cadets at Texas A&M.
Ray spoke Tuesday before a closed-door meeting of Virginia Military Institute's governing Board of Visitors, who met for more than five hours to hear reports from Ray and others about taking the school coed. She also has met with VMI administrators, who have met daily for two weeks to hammer out a plan to admit women to the 1,200-member corps of cadets.
Texas A&M, a 40,000-student state university, has 2,000 cadets. About 100 are women - 3 percent to 5 percent of the whole, Ray said. The corps at Virginia Tech will be 20 percent female this fall, when nearly 650 cadets will be among the expected 24,000 students, officials there said.
VMI officials still aren't talking about the specific changes on the horizon if VMI admits women. Considerations include housing women in the open barracks as well as integrating them into the adversative "rat line" that requires freshmen, or "rats," to walk a certain way, eat a certain way, and answer to upperclassmen.
Officials also are considering how to recruit women.
"We've looked very hard at it back at school; we know how to do it," Superintendent Josiah Bunting III said.
Bunting is headed for Texas in six weeks to see how Texas A&M's corps operates. He also reiterated his "earnest and settled conviction" that the school could admit women and remain as close to its current style as possible, and that includes retaining the rat line.
If women come to VMI, they likely would arrive in the fall of 1997.
"The plan will incorporate the unique benefits of the VMI system in an atmosphere structured for success for both young men and young women," board president Bill Berry read from a prepared statement Tuesday.
Tuesday's meeting, held at the Richmond law offices of VMI attorneys McGuire Woods Battle & Booth, was the board's second since the Supreme Court issued its 7-1 decision in June that ordered the school to admit women.
It will meet again Aug. 28, with an eye toward a Sept. 21 decision to go coed or go private.
VMI's private alumni groups are looking into taking the school private. The governing board of 17, whose members are appointed to four-year terms by the governor, can't lead a privatizing move because it is a state body.
Among those sitting in on Tuesday's session was former Sen. Elmon Gray, VMI class of '46, who said he was "just listening."
Also attending, along with the board members and VMI administrators, were Steve Fogleman,president of the VMI Alumni Association, and past president Edwin "Pete" Cox III.
"We're trying to keep everybody informed within the family," Berry said.
LENGTH: Medium: 60 linesby CNB