THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, October 14, 1994 TAG: 9410140010
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A22 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Short : 34 lines
``VMI: the stakes'' (editorial, Sept. 28) concerning the attack on VMI's single-sex admissions policy failed to point out an underlying, false assumption - that sex and race, as bases for discrimination, should be equal in the eyes of the law and that it should be illegal to discriminate solely on the basis of either. These two innate characteristics should not be treated the same.
It is immoral, under any circumstances, to discriminate on the basis of race. A person's sex, however, must be handled differently in some instances.
Schools and colleges should not be allowed to discriminate in their admissions policies on the basis of race. It should, however, be legal, and it is not immoral to design a curriculum for young women and to discriminate against young men in the admissions process.
Each human creature is endowed with gender-specific, sexual characteristics that alter the behavior of individuals along sexual lines. The physiology and behavior of most men and women are such that there are predictable risks when we do not discriminate on the basis of sex.
Those who equate sex and race as bases for discrimination are guilty of shallow thinking and need, themselves, to be more discriminating.
WILLIAM R. MILLER III
Virginia Beach, Oct. 5, 1994 by CNB