THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, August 22, 1995 TAG: 9508220277
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines
Four days after Shannon Faulkner quit as the first woman cadet at The Citadel, 42 women set out today on a course that is Virginia's answer to the debate over all-male military schools.
The Virginia Women's Institute for Leadership, based at Mary Baldwin College, was approved in January by a split federal appeals court that agreed the state could institute the program instead of admitting women to state-funded Virginia Military Institute.
Court hearings, as part of the Faulkner suit, are scheduled this fall to decide whether a similar women's program will be allowed in South Carolina so The Citadel can remain all-male.
And Virginia could be in the U.S. Supreme Court within weeks. By October, the court is expected to say if it will hear the U.S. Justice Department's 6-year-old sex-discrimination case against VMI.
Meanwhile, women like Roanoke County's Trimble Bailey are preparing to embark on their college careers against a backdrop of national debate over the all-male schools.
Bailey, whose high academic credentials gave her a shot at the U.S. Naval Academy and some of the South's most prestigious schools, opted for the women's institute for a variety of reasons. Among them: She was heavily recruited, and she saw it as the best route to becoming a doctor.
Bailey, 18, said she felt sorry for Faulkner and still wonders what her goal was. She was not impressed by the gleeful reaction of Faulkner's classmates to the news of her withdrawal.
``From seeing what she's been through . . . I personally would not want to go through what she's been through,'' said Bailey.
``She was an individual who could not handle it. A different person at a different time may have made it . . . I don't think you can group it all as a whole (example) for womankind.''
Some experts say the women's institute should produce female leaders of the same caliber as the male graduates at VMI.
``I don't think women should go to VMI,'' Bailey said, because they have their own state program now.
Virginia taxpayers give each women's institute student $7,300 a year, making up the tuition difference between public VMI and private Mary Baldwin and providing an attractive incentive to students. VMI's private foundation has promised a $5 million endowment if VMI wins the case. So far, the foundation has given the women's college $546,000 in start-up funding.
Mary Baldwin has pledged to see each freshman class through to its senior year, regardless of the outcome of the court case, college spokeswoman Crista Cabe said.
While women's institute students officially are Mary Baldwin students, certain requirements set them apart from their classmates: living together, taking leadership courses, participating in sports, community activities and ROTC; and undergoing a more structured lifestyle.
The mix of students arriving today is broad, Brenda Bryant, the institute's director, said. Some wanted to attend a women's college. Some Virginia students considered the same schools Bailey considered. Seven are coming out of military academies or junior ROTC programs.
But the high-profile court case that brings them to their new school doesn't seem to be uppermost in their minds. And they might have an opinion on the case between Faulkner and The Citadel, ``but they don't seem to connect it to their experience here,'' Bryant said.
``The whole program is new, and when you're doing something for the first time,'' said Bryant, ``it's a learning experience. We're discovering things that are new to us or different from what we expected.''
Bailey, Roanoke County's Junior Miss, became interested in the military during the Persian Gulf War. Rep. Bob Goodlatte nominated her to go to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis.
But she realized that would mean the military would come first, then medicine. So she started to check into ROTC scholarships, and settled on the Air Force. She considered the University of Virginia, The College of William and Mary, Duke University and the University of Kentucky.
Then came the evening she and her family went to the Salem Civic Center for a college night. They wandered past booth after booth of college recruiters. On the way out, VWIL caught Bailey's eye.
Not long after that, a television news team spent a day following her through her high school halls. Then the family decided - ``just for the fun, really, of the experience,'' Bailey's mother Denise said - to visit Mary Baldwin, where the news crew wanted to tape Bailey amid the brick campus buildings set in a hillside.
The news segment never did air. But Bailey ended up talking more and more to the Mary Baldwin staffers. They recruited hard, but weren't pushy, she said.
In the end, Bailey narrowed her choices to VWIL and Kentucky. She wants to major in physics, which Mary Baldwin doesn't offer. So the college negotiated with Washington & Lee University next to VMI in Lexington. With ROTC students traveling to Lexington anyway, Bailey's transportation is taken care of. And now she has a physics major by taking classes at W&L.
Bailey also had a $9,000 ROTC scholarship for three years. The institute then offered the state-supplied $7,300 per year; Mary Baldwin offered another scholarship and won over Trimble Bailey. ILLUSTRATION: LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE photo
Trimble Bailey, whose academic credentials gave her a shot at the
South's most prestigious schools, lives in Roanoke.
by CNB