THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 20, 1995 TAG: 9508160033
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K3 EDITION: FINAL
LENGTH: Long : 101 lines
DAVE SAYS:
Will-she, won't-she?
Would-she, could-she?
Week after week, year after year, the dumbest questions the media could drum up have stuck to Shannon Faulkner like chewing gum to pair of gym shoes, and a couple of them actually got answered last week.
Yes, Shannon Faulkner would join the corps of cadets at one of the last bastions of southern malehood, The Citadel.
No, Shannon Faulkner couldn't hold up, collapsing from the heat on her first day of drills.
Sure, four of the boys collapsed, too, but they probably shouldn't have been there, either.
There's one question I haven't heard asked, at least out loud, and I'd sure like an answer: Should any of us really care? Should we really have a mob of honest-to-Jimmy-Olsen reporters chasing around South Carolina trying to track Shannon Faulkner's pulse rate, waiting for her to swoon?
I don't think so. What has happened here is that a legitimate question - Should a government-funded university exclude a class of its citizens? - has been displaced by a not-so-legitimate symbol: Shannon Faulkner.
In short, the fate of a slightly pudgy flute player who can't do pushups, commands a private room and won't get her hair cut should not be allowed to overwhelm the question at hand.
The same thing happened, in the same week, with the abortion question: When it was held within the legal boundaries of Roe v. Wade, there was a legitimacy to the argument, no matter how shrill either side got.
But ``Roe'' once again stepped out from behind the court-imposed shield of anonymity in the form of the pathetic Norma McCorvey, whose fragile personality has been abused her entire adult life by moral combatants who've treated her with all the concern they'd show for a nickel poker chip: They've dragged her from one side of the table to the other in a game whose stakes keep growing and whose rules she never really understood.
I don't know about you, Kerry, but I'm tired of following the exploits of these sad women who've become symbols, willing or otherwise, for serious social dramas. Their fringe performances are keeping us from understanding the plot. Somebody ought to show a little mercy and usher both of them off the stage.
KERRY SAYS:
Sorry, Dave, but we should care about what happens to Shannon Faulkner.
The Citadel and its twin, VMI, are just about the last bulwarks of testosterone poisoning left in the South - besides the Good Ol' Boys gatherings federal agents are so fond of.
You can dress up the debate any way you want to, you can put Shannon Faulkner under a magnifying glass, but one thing remains strikingly true: It ain't fair.
You can't have state-supported schools that discriminate on the basis of sex.
And they can form all the ``leadership institutes'' they want here in Virginia to try to get around adverse court decisions, but the old separate-but-equal equation remains way out of balance.
Personally, I can't understand why anyone would want to attend these two military academy wannabes anyway. If you're really smart and you're desperate to spend your college years on the parade ground, why not just schmooze your local legislators and get an appointment to a real military academy?
Why do the hard-working taxpayers of Virginia and South Carolina have to foot the bill for these male-only joints?
Tradition, they say? Spare me.
Perhaps the better question is why those rich white guys who went to VMI and The Citadel don't just get out their checkbooks and privatize the schools. They like the government handouts, that's why. Which just proves to me that these state-supported all-boy schools not only produce a lot of chauvinists - they produce a lot of cheapskates, too.
My heart goes out to Shannon Faulkner. Every time I read about her I think of all the trail blazers who went before her, integrating everything from the ballot booths to public buses.
They sacrifice their privacy for a cause - and not always a popular one.
They also expose themselves and their families to public ridicule. Not everyone who stepped forward to demand equal rights has been a paragon of virtue, that's true. Many of these courageous people were flawed - like the rest of us.
It would be terrific for the women's movement if Ms. Faulkner could run a four-minute mile and do 100 one-armed push-ups, wear a size 4 uniform and graduate first in her class.
Unfortunately, she's like most people. Trying hard, not perfect.
I know the right to a state-supported pseudo-military education is not the same as gaining the right to vote, the right to ride city buses or the right to equal pay for equal work.
But apparently it's that important to this young cadet.
And I think the fact that she succumbed to the heat on a 100-degree day when the knobs were parading around in the scorching sun is not an indication that Faulkner shouldn't be there, but that perhaps the entire exercise is the invention of some sadistic mental midget.
But as a Virginia taxpayer, I think the choice for VMI and The Citadel is a clear one.
Let women in, or pay for the school yourselves. MEMO: The He Said/She Said column in today's Real Life section was written
before Shannon Faulkner, the first woman admitted to The Citadel,
dropped out Friday. The section is printed Thursday.
by CNB