ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 5, 1997 TAG: 9701060073
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: FREDERICKSBURG
SOURCE: Associated Press
A member of the Virginia Military Institute Board of Visitors has resigned in protest of the school's decision to admit women.
Thomas M. Moncure Jr., a 1973 VMI graduate, said he cannot support admitting women when the school argued against doing so for six years when sued by the U.S. Department of Justice.
``I'm walking away. I cannot continue to be a party to what must ultimately be a sham on the good people of Virginia,'' Moncure told The Free Lance-Star on Friday.
Opening the state-supported military college to women ``flies in the face of our own evidence and the documented experience of every other military school that has gone this route,'' Moncure said in his letter of resignation to Gov. George Allen.
Allen appointed Moncure, Stafford County's Circuit Court clerk, to the VMI governing board in July.
Moncure was one of eight board members who voted against admitting women following a U.S. Supreme Court decision that the school could not exclude women and continue to receive state funding. The vote to admit women was 9-8.
The school's other option was to go private, hoping that alumni could raise the nearly $400 million necessary to buy the school from the state and endow it.
VMI has said it intends to make only minimal changes to accommodate women.
Moncure said he does not believe that VMI can admit women without making substantial changes to the way the 157-year-old school operates.
He said VMI has always held equality as an absolute. Making changes such as requiring male upperclassmen to knock on the door of a female cadet's room before entering eliminates that absolute equality, Moncure said.
Secretary of the Commonwealth Betsy Davis Beamer said Allen will name a replacement for Moncure within the next month.
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