THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 23, 1994 TAG: 9407230211
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY RONALD SMOTHERS, THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: CHARLESTON, S.C. LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines
Calling its exclusion of women unconstitutional, a federal judge Friday ordered The Citadel to break its 152-year-old all-male tradition by immediately admitting Shannon Faulkner, the 19-year-old woman who has waged a long admissions battle to enroll in the military college.
U.S. District Judge C. Weston Houck said that excluding women from the college's Corps of Cadets violated the equal protection provisions of the 14th Amendment.
He went on to excoriate the college, a state-supported institution, for spending ``millions of dollars'' of taxpayers' money to defend the admissions policy in court, saying they had produced little evidence to justify the exclusion of women.
And he said they had made little effort to come up with other remedies to satisfy Faulkner's goal of attending the school.
``The question of a remedy for Faulkner is critical,'' Houck wrote. ``Under the circumstances existing in this case, the court thus concludes that the only adequate remedy available to provide the plaintiff the rights guaranteed to her by the equal protection clause is her immediate admission to the Corps of Cadets at the Citadel.''
The ruling, though a setback for The Citadel, was directed more toward remedying Faulkner's immediate situation than rewriting the college's future admissions policies.
Indeed, the judge directed the college to devise a ``constitutional'' remedy for future female applicants and to present that remedy to him within 60 days with the aim of instituting it in time for the 1995-96 school year.
Lawyers for both sides in the case said this portion of the ruling seemed to suggest that the school might be able to come up with a way to avoid a completely coeducational admissions policy in the future, perhaps by enrolling women in a parallel but separate cadet program at another college.
That was the remedy implemented by Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, the nation's only other state-supported, all-male military college. After a federal appeals court in Richmond found that the state of Virginia had failed to advance a policy that justified the school's exclusion of women, alumni helped finance an all-female military program at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton.
In May, just before Faulkner's case went to trial, the federal courts ruled that a parallel program was a constitutional way of excluding women from VMI. The Justice Department is appealing that ruling.
For now, Citadel officials said they would not only appeal Friday's ruling on Faulkner but also seek a stay of the judge's order before Aug. 14, when the new class of cadets is scheduled to arrive at the 1,900-student college. The officials vowed to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary to bar Faulkner from enrolling.
Faulkner, who received word of the ruling at her home in Powdersville, S.C., applauded the decision.
``It's not just for women,'' said Faulkner, who has resisted the label of feminist. ``It's for everyone. If you believe in something, go for it.'' by CNB