ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, August 21, 1996 TAG: 9608210035
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
A Virginia Military Institute professor returned home from a two-week Colorado vacation recently and reported the following incident to his boss: He'd discussed coeducation at the public men's school with three U.S. Naval Academy midshipmen he encountered on his trip.
"We understand it would be actionable if we had a conversation which we had not reported," VMI Superintendent Josiah Bunting III said Tuesday.
And so VMI will report itself to the U.S. Justice Department, which on July 31 issued a letter ordering the school to stop contact with the federal military academies "without first submitting these in writing to counsel for the United States for prior consideration and decision."
The letter has infuriated Bunting, and prompted assistant state Attorney General Bill Hurd to say, "We have reason to believe all the service academies
In the letter, signed by an attorney on behalf of Deval Patrick, assistant attorney general for civil rights, the department asks the school to halt contact because the case remains in litigation. Also, it states, the request is "consistent with past practice" in the long-running sex-discrimination case and an Army regulation.
Although a near-unanimous Supreme Court decided in June that VMI must give up public funds if it is to remain all male, the case was remanded to U.S. District Court Judge Jackson Kiser in Roanoke.
He will oversee VMI's compliance with the order. On Sept. 21, the school's Board of Visitors is expected to decide VMI's path to compliance: whether to admit women or allow the private alumni associations to take the school private.
A justice department spokesman did not return calls Tuesday.
The arrival of the letter has curtailed part of a summer-long study looking into taking the 156-year-old school coed. Bunting is leading the nine-member study group, which is made up of representatives from faculty, cadets and administrators.
"We're trying to get information as to how women are efficiently integrated into a corps of cadets regarding things like housing, athletics, physical fitness testing. That kind of stuff," Bunting said.
His committee still can talk with non-federal military schools about coeducation, he said, and should have no problem completing a report for the board by Sept. 21.
"The small tragedy of this, the high farce, is that the only communications we have had with the federal agencies ... is communication designed innocently and imaginatively to further the business the Justice Department wants, namely, how to admit women into VMI efficiently," Bunting said.
Hurd disputed whether a rule cited for halting contact, an Army regulation that orders its staff not to provide "opinion or expert testimony" in certain types of lawsuits, applies. It "certainly is not intended to prevent leaders at those educational institutions from working with leaders at VMI to craft a plan for coeducation that would be successful," Hurd said.
For his part, Bunting was more philosophical.
"Whenever an agency of government imposes that kind of a regulation or restriction upon free intercourse of people or institutions of good will, particularly in a republic, it is a bad thing," he said in an interview.
LENGTH: Medium: 63 linesby CNB