ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, December 3, 1996 TAG: 9612030099
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
Noting what "seems to be a lack of meaningful communication" between the state and the Justice Department, U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser on Monday ordered Virginia Military Institute to file quarterly progress reports on coeducation.
Kiser did not ask for a detailed, up-front plan that the U.S. Justice Department had requested, but a spokesman there still was happy.
"We're pleased that the court's agreed that VMI must submit a plan, as we've asked for quite some time," spokesman Myron Marlin said.
Likewise, state officials who feared micromanagement from the Justice Department hailed the decision.
Virginia Attorney General Jim Gilmore called it a victory for VMI.
"The approach adopted by the court leaves management of the institute in the hands of the Board of Visitors rather than the Department of Justice," he said.
VMI Superintendent Josiah Bunting III called the order from Kiser "appropriate, and one that we accept thankfully and with good will."
Bunting and Bill Hurd, a deputy state attorney general, both pointed out that VMI never has said it would not keep the court up to date on its progress in admitting women.
The quarterly reports must be filed two weeks after each meeting of the VMI board, which next meets this Friday and Saturday.
The two sides were in court last month after the Justice Department asked that VMI be required to submit a plan for coeducation within 30 days.
In his eight-page opinion, Kiser said the combined mandate of the U.S. Supreme Court and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals means the state must "formulate, adopt, and implement a plan" for admitting women to the 157-year-old public men's college. In June, the Supreme Court ruled that the school must open its doors to women or give up public funds.
Kiser went on to point out that VMI has filed with the court various actions that it has taken in its efforts to prepare for coeducation next fall. These range from hiring an architect to design women's bathrooms in the barracks to coming up with scholarship money for qualified women applicants.
"The United States objects to proceeding without a detailed plan and asserts that the court should require Virginia to produce such a plan forthwith," Kiser wrote. However, the department "overstates its case" when it says Virginia is dragging its feet about admitting women, or that the Supreme Court requires it to submit a plan now.
Kiser also said he would not "discuss, case by case, the legal precedent cited by the United States for the proposition that Virginia must immediately submit to the court a detailed plan." Most of these cases are racial desegregation cases "where, after many years, the school district or the state involved had not desegregated their school systems," he wrote.
Still, "the problem at this point in the case seems to be a lack of meaningful communication" between the two sides, he wrote.
"It appears to me that, had the United States been kept informed as to what Virginia was doing to comply with the mandate of the Supreme Court, the present motion would not have been necessary," he said.
Hurd said Monday that the state wanted to avoid micromanagement from the federal government.
"Based on what we have seen at The Citadel, we were convinced that nothing short of capitulation would keep us out of court," he said.
The Citadel this fall admitted its first coed class, after announcing soon after the Supreme Court decision that it would admit women. The Justice Department has asked for a long list of details from that South Carolina school, including the composition by sex of faculty, staff and administrators by position.
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