ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, September 19, 1996 TAG: 9609190070
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LEXINGTON
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Lede
The federal government is trying to "hound and harass" Virginia Military Institute just days before it decides whether to admit women or go private.
So wrote Assistant State Attorney General William Hurd in response to the U.S. Department of Justice's request last week that the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond order VMI to send admission applications to women. Hurd filed his papers late Tuesday.
"First, DOJ cut off the free flow of information between VMI and the national service academies, where valuable lessons learned from their admission of women could have provided assistance to VMI in developing its own plans," Hurd wrote.
"Second, DOJ demanded that VMI abandon careful, methodical planning and summarily invite applications from women for the fall of 1997 or else temporarily refuse such applications from men."
He called the Justice Department's motion ``an unjustified attempt to portray VMI as an outlaw and deserving of public calumny'' and asked that the issue be returned to U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser in Roanoke for further action.
Fifty-two women have inquired about attending VMI since June 26, when the Supreme Court ruled that the state-supported school must admit women. They have received letters stating that VMI officials have not decided how they will comply with the ruling.
Hurd said a slight delay in sending applications to the women would cause no harm.
VMI and the Justice Department also have clashed over school officials' efforts to talk with service academies about how they integrated women into their ranks. The Justice Department said VMI must get its permission before contacting the academies or the Defense Department.
The Justice Department's actions, both taken since VMI announced in July that two different groups would study admitting women and going private, have steeled the resolve of alumni who want to take the school private, VMI Superintendent Josiah Bunting III said Wednesday.
"I can think of two important and much admired VMI alumni ... who immediately became identified with the movement to take the school private" after recent Justice Department actions, Bunting said.
He spoke after the school's board of visitors ended the first day of its final series of meetings before deciding Saturday how to comply with the Supreme Court ruling. As it has all summer, the board met in private to consider a plan to take the school coed.
If the school goes coed, the matter could be back before Kiser as soon as next week, Bunting predicted.
This morning, representatives from the VMI Alumni Association are expected to present their report on how to go private to the board. The cost is expected to be hundreds of millions of dollars, both to build an endowment that would provide operating funds and to purchase the campus from the state.
Meanwhile, board members are debating just how much "detail we ... need to go into at this early stage" regarding coeducation, board President Bill Berry said.
"This is one of those subjects in which God is in the details," Bunting said. For example, he said, how should women's hair be cut?
A committee of campus administrators has been studying coeducation for the board. Bunting said they've examined the "the culture of the barracks," where VMI cadets live together with no privacy. One part of that is the "dyke system" wherein a freshman, or "rat," is assigned a "dyke" -an upperclass mentor. If women come, Bunting said, will they have male dykes? Or will VMI find upperclass women who've been at other military schools to come to VMI as exchange students?
Still, if women come, "the changes contemplated are almost zero. Not quite, but almost," he said.
Women might live in the barracks or nearby, but no decisions have been made. He also declined to say how much money the school would need to admit women, deferring to Saturday's vote.
"Obviously, we're a state school. The state would be asked to bear a fair amount of those costs," he said.
Recruiting a minimum of 20 young women to enter the first year would be key, but Bunting also said the school has not talked with any potential recruits.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
LENGTH: Medium: 83 linesby CNB