THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, August 12, 1995 TAG: 9508120068
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: CHARLESTON, S.C. LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines
The nation's chief justice Friday cleared the way for Shannon Faulkner to report to The Citadel this morning as the first female cadet in the school's 152-year history.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist rejected an emergency request from the state-run military school to keep her out.
The Citadel made a last-ditch appeal to Justice Antonin Scalia, but he rejected the request without comment late Friday. Scalia could have granted the request or referred the matter to the full court.
Cadets are due to report this morning.
Faulkner, a 20-year-old junior, was not immediately available for comment. Her mother, reached at the family home in Powdersville, said her daughter was headed to Charleston.
Rehnquist, who studied the case from his vacation home in Vermont, gave no written reason for his decision.
``We intend to comply fully with the orders of the courts,'' Citadel President Claudius E. Watts III said.
``The issue concerning single-gender education is a legal controversy about which there are differing views and attitudes. It is not a fight between The Citadel and Shannon Faulkner,'' Watts said.
The Charleston school was ordered by a federal appeals court in April to admit Faulkner as a cadet if the state did not establish a comparable military program for women at some other school.
The state is developing a $10 million women's leadership program at private Converse College, but the plan is still in preliminary stages and has not been approved by the courts.
The Citadel and Virginia Military Institute in Lexington are the nation's only all-male, state-supported military colleges.
The Citadel had asked Rehnquist, who handles emergency matters from South Carolina for the high court, to delay Faulkner's entrance as a cadet until the full court reviews the case.
Faulkner was accepted by The Citadel in 1993 after references to her gender were deleted from her high school transcript. The school later withdrew its offer of admission, and she sued, claiming the all-male program is unconstitutional.
She has attended classes at the 2,000-student college since January 1994 under an order from U.S. District Judge C. Weston Houck, but she has not been allowed to take military training or wear a uniform. ILLUSTRATION: Shannon Faulkner
by CNB