ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, September 29, 1996 TAG: 9609300106
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROLAND LAZENBY
I WAS returning east on a flight from California in 1992 when I met a young Virginia Military Institute graduate, a Navy pilot. As two concerned alums, we discussed the court battle over the admission of women to VMI.
The officer pointed out that there was a woman pilot in his fighter squadron, and that the training for the job required that each pilot be able to land a plane on an aircraft carrier deck at night.
Landing those planes was a truly terrifying task, the most frightening, challenging thing he had ever attempted, the pilot said. Then he added, "I guess if a woman can land a plane on one of those carrier decks at night, she's certainly qualified to go to VMI."
It seemed that the U.S. Supreme Court arrived at a similar conclusion in June, when it overwhelmingly voted to end the male-only admission policy of the 157-year-old, state-supported school.
The decision followed years of legal maneuvering (and millions in attorneys' fees) as VMI sought desperately to maintain its single-sex status.
As an indication of its determination, the school dallied three months after being ordered by the highest authority in the land to change its policy. Instead, the school's leaders studied an option of turning VMI into a private institution rather than comply with the ruling.
As a VMI alumnus, this response concerned me for two reasons:
* The military system, as I learned it at VMI, is based on the concept of duty, of following direct orders from the recognized authority. That VMI seemed unwilling or unprepared to do its duty reflected an embarrassing depth of hypocrisy. How can an institution train young people to be citizen/soldiers when its very leaders are making a point of bucking authority in a very public manner?
* The idea that VMI could function as a private institution flies in the face of everything the school stands for. Its stated mission is the production of citizen/soldiers, graduates directed toward a lifetime of public service in the military and civilian sectors.
The epitome of this calling was the career of Gen. George C. Marshall, the brilliant military leader who became secretary of state in the Truman administration and who constructed the Marshall Plan, America's comprehensive effort to rebuild Europe from the ashes of World World War II.
If VMI has existed for no other purpose than to produce Marshall, it has more than repaid the resources the state of Virginia has allocated to it over the past century and a half. But the fact is, VMI has produced scores of public servants in the Marshall mold. The idea of privatizing the school seemed an insult to his legacy.
Only the other day, by a narrow vote, did the school's Board of Visitors elect to admit women. But even then, it did so with defiance. Gen. Josiah Bunting, VMI's superintendent, declared that virtually every feature of the school's infamous "rat line" would remain in effect for any female cadets, including the requirement that they receive a "buzz cut" haircut upon matriculation.
Such a notion is nonsense. The armed services today require females to wear their hair closely cropped, which is reasonable. But a buzz cut would only add to a young woman's sense of alienation and would further limit the pool of females willing to become cadets. Besides, the buzz cut is no long-held VMI tradition but rather a product of the decades since World War II.
This insistence on buzz cuts suggests that the school's administrators are intent on proving a point that they could not prove in court. Instead, they are dangerously close to reducing this once-great school to a place that no longer bears relevance amid the challenges of our modern world.
The late Raymond Fulton, a cadet who matriculated from Carroll County in the early 1920s, once recalled that several times during his first year he was struck - while standing at attention - by an upperclassman. Today, such an action would be grounds for immediate dismissal. Yet there is ample anecdotal evidence that for years cadets considered such hazing part of the VMI tradition.
Fulton, by the way, was a member of the institute's cavalry, another long-loved VMI tradition that fell by the wayside in the age of mechanization.
The bottom line is that VMI's traditions have changed dramatically over the years, most of them for the better. Regardless, the only tradition at the school that really matters is the pursuit of excellence, yet it seems school officials are so intent on preserving these lesser traditions that they have lost sight of the primary goal.
To maintain its tradition of excellence, VMI must attract the best students and faculty it can. Yet if it persists in the sullen mentality of this rear-guard battle, how can the school hope to provide a model of leadership for the 2lst century?
The world has changed, and young women today are better prepared than ever to assume the responsibility of the rights our courts have finally extended to them. VMI needs the energy, intelligence and drive that women will bring to its campus.
Instead of spending money on lawyers' fees, it should have welcomed women and invested those millions in curriculum, with the idea of enhancing Marshall's legacy.
Rather than shrink from this challenge now, the school should step up and face it. After all, the task of finding women who want to learn in such a challenging environment is daunting. But if the school could find a way to fund 80 to 100 full and partial scholarships for female student-athletes, it would go a long way toward beginning this new tradition.
First of all, these student-athletes would stand up better to the physical demands of the VMI system, and their intercollegiate competition could forge stronger bonds not only among themselves but also with the corps at large.
From the outside, the VMI system seems impossibly harsh, but the beauty of this system of education is that through the rat line, VMI provides young people a means of coping with great challenges.
Now, VMI must extend the opportunity of that education to women. The school's leaders must change the mental climate among the cadet corps to make sure that not only does the school provide the same rigorous challenge, but it offers the same hope for success.
After all, VMI still faces the same agenda. It must produce another Marshall. It matters not a whit if her first name is Georgia.
Roland Lazenby, a writer who lives in Roanoke and teaches speech communication at Radford University, is a 1975 graduate of Virginia Military Institute.
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