THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 2, 1995 TAG: 9509020405
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 93 lines
The federal government is running military officer training programs at Virginia Military Institute and The Citadel even as it pursues litigation accusing the military schools of illegal discrimination.
The Pentagon's continuing acceptance of and cooperation in training VMI and Citadel students, sources on both sides of the litigation acknowledged, seems to fly in the face of the Justice Department's protracted and expensive effort to get women into the schools.
But a Defense Department spokesman, Air Force Col. Douglas Kennett, last week reaffirmed the military's intention to keep Reserve Officers Training Corps programs at the schools unless a court declares they are breaking the law.
Those programs each year produce about 200 new officers, out of about 7,000 coming from ROTC programs nationwide. Ninety-four VMI grads were commissioned in 1994, fourth highest among ROTC programs; The Citadel, with 105 graduates awarded commissions, ranked third overall.
Because both schools have a record of producing high-quality officers, the military would resist suggestions that it withdraw ROTC from their campuses, Pentagon sources said.
The schools also may benefit from a network of well-placed supporters in Congress. The Citadel, in Charleston, S.C., gets help from Sen. Strom Thurmond and Rep. Floyd Spence, two South Carolina Republicans who head the key military oversight committees in their respective houses.
South Carolina's other senator, Democrat Ernest F. Hollings, is a Citadel graduate. Virginia's senior senator, Republican John W. Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee traces his affection for VMI to his days as an undergraduate at Washington & Lee University, a private school across town from VMI in Lexington.
Loss of the ROTC program would be a serious blow to VMI, concedes a source involved in the school's battle to remain all-male.
While a minority of VMI grads pursue military careers, ``many of the people who come there do so with the idea of being in the military for some period of time,'' said the source, who asked to remain anonymous. Loss of the program wouldn't necessarily be disastrous, the source added, ``but it would disturb the existing scheme of things.''
The competing interests between the Justice Department and the military have gone all but unnoticed among women's rights advocates.
That could change. One member of a Pentagon-created advisory panel on women's issues said last week that he intends to initiate a review of the military's relationship with the schools.
John N. Parker of Virginia Beach, a retired Air Force pilot, said he plans to raise the issue at a meeting in October of the Defense Advisory Commission on Women In The Services. The commission has no power to change the policy, but it has been an advocate for reforms that in recent years have opened most military jobs - other than those involving direct combat on the ground - to women.
Parker suggested that the experience of women at the Pentagon's own service schools, where they've been attending classes for more than 20 years, demonstrates that women can do well in such settings.
Sue Ann Tempero, the commission's chairman, said she has some concerns about the military's continuing involvement with VMI and The Citadel, but ``I haven't drawn a conclusion at this point.''
The women's commission members planned a visit to the VMI campus in the late 1980s, recalled R. Claire Guthrie, a former Virginia deputy attorney general who was involved in defending the school at that time. But the plan evaporated, she said.
The ROTC programs at The Citadel also became an issue briefly last year, when Citadel officials said they would order Shannon Faulkner to shave her head if she was admitted.
A court order stopped the haircut plan, however, and when Faulkner finally enrolled she was allowed to wear her hair pulled back in a tight bun. Faulkner withdrew from the school after the first week.
As part of VMI's battle with the Justice Department, VMI and Mary Baldwin College, a private women's school in Staunton, have cooperated to establish the Virginia Women's Institute for Leadership. The program, which enrolled its first students this month, will include ROTC training at VMI.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has approved the women's leadership program as an alternative to admitting women to VMI. But the Justice Department is vowing to take its challenge to the Virginia school, and to a similar program being created by South Carolina for The Citadel, to the Supreme Court.
One former member of the Defense Advisory Commission on Women In The Services said that the military and the Justice Department should embrace the Virginia Women's Institute for Leadership approach as a way to produce quality female officers while preserving the strengths of the all-male programs at VMI and The Citadel.
Suggestions that the military withdraw ROTC from the all-male schools are ``an outrage,'' said Elaine Donnelly, a conservative activist and founder of the Michigan-based Center for Military Readiness.
KEYWORDS: WOMEN IN THE MILITARY SINGLE SEX COLLEGE by CNB