THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 17, 1995 TAG: 9509190217
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
LENGTH: Long : 351 lines
Besieged by women's rights advocates who consider them among the last bastions of male exclusivity, Virginia Military Institute and The Citadel have manned the barricades to keep women out of their ranks.
The nation's only two public all-male military colleges have long, proud traditions and some powerful friends on their side. But their critics say it's just a matter of time before they're forced to mend their ways.
In this month's Hampton Roads Roundtable, The Virginian-Pilot and public radio station WHRV brought four panelists together to discuss the issue: a VMI alumnus, a member of the VMI board of visitors, a women's rights activist and a member of the first class of women to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
The discussion illustrated how deeply divided the opposing sides are in this controversy - and why it will probably take a Supreme Court decision to resolve it.
The discussion was moderated by staff writer Bill Sizemore.
NO FEMALES NEED APPLY
Critics, including the U.S. Justice Department, say that by excluding women, VMI and The Citadel are guilty of illegal discrimination. What is the justification for barring women from a state-supported educational institution?
Stephen Fogleman: That's a complex question but simply stated, VMI's been through about four weeks of trial, two different trials. It's been to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit twice. . . .
As it stands now, VMI's single-sex policy is constitutional, and the state of Virginia has created a new opportunity for women, the Virginia Women's Institute for Leadership at Mary Baldwin College.
Some people like to couch it in terms of discrimination, but it's really about the survival of single-sex education. . . .
Virginia today has a co-ed corps of cadets at Virginia Tech. They have a single-sex male corps of cadets at VMI and they have a single-sex women's corps at Mary Baldwin College. So for the people of Virginia, they've got an option of three different environments.
One of the foundations of these schools' defense is that they are providing a valuable alternative educational setting. Would you agree that single-sex education can be beneficial?
Renee Olander: I would strongly agree that it can be. It's not for everyone, obviously, and I should say that I went to Mary Baldwin College. . .
I have at my fingertips all kinds of information that show that women who come out of women's colleges achieve at levels higher than women who attend co-ed schools. For instance, of the women in Congress, currently, 54 women in Congress, 24 percent went to women's colleges, although of women college graduates only 4 percent attended women's colleges. And there are analogous kinds of numbers for women who are CEOs or leaders in Fortune 500 or Fortune 1000 companies. . . .
I think there's another issue: the whole issue of funding. Now, in the state of Virginia, the state actually provides an equal amount of funding for female students at Mary Baldwin who are in the Virginia Women's Institute for Leadership as is spent on VMI students. . . .
Before that agreement was made, I was very concerned about the disparity of state or public expenditures. But I'm less uneasy now, seeing that there is a state commitment to equally support women in a leadership institute.
IS ``SEPARATE BUT EQUAL'' POSSIBLE?
Are you prepared to sign off on the current plan, which is to provide a ``separate but equal'' program for women at Mary Baldwin? Do you think that solves the problem?
Olander: Well, I don't think that the issue is really ``separate but equal.'' For one thing, that old argument used during the segregated days was a hoax because they were not equal at all. There wasn't equal resources. There was no equality there.
This program, the VWIL program, is not actually designed to be the same. If equal means the same, which I'm afraid that lots of people construe it to be, then the programs are not equal in that sense. . . .
I spent quite a lot of time as an undergraduate observing VMI and the fairly barbaric behaviors at work there, on the ``rats'' especially. And I'm not someone who would encourage anyone I love to go there, actually.
Say there was a woman who did not feel as you do about the desirability of going to VMI. Say there was a woman who believed that the VMI experience was exactly what she wanted. Then are you prepared to agree with Mr. Fogleman and VMI and the state of Virginia that she should be denied that opportunity?
Olander: Well, there are so many kinds of factors that would be involved in that. I would not support another student to go in sort of like a lamb to the slaughter as Shannon Faulkner did at The Citadel. . . .
What I would support would be a whole class of women going into The Citadel or wherever.
Maj. Carol Barkalow: The Department of Defense says it's an equal opportunity employer, and at both VMI and The Citadel, you've got ROTC that women are not allowed to be a part of. And in my opinion, if VMI and The Citadel want to stay all male - and I do support single-sex education - then the ROTC program should be taken away from both of those schools.
Fogleman: Well, Major, if you take it away from VMI, would you also take it away from Wellesley and Smith?
Barkalow: Sure. Yes, I would. Across the board - men's schools, women's schools. What I don't want in my Army is a young adult second lieutenant to come in who hasn't had the benefit of working with the opposite sex during probably the most formative years of their young adulthood.
Fogleman: Well, you do know that VWIL and VMI are teaching ROTC in a co-ed environment.
Barkalow: I think you'll agree with me as a graduate of VMI that the institution and the feeling, day after day, of being with your classmates, being in that environment, culls a cohesive unit that has bonded together. There's a big difference between seeing somebody, oh, maybe once a week or not having the same environment that it is day after day.
Fogleman: Are you saying that graduates of a single-sex school cannot operate in the real world?
Barkalow: No, I never said that. And don't interpret that. What I'm saying is, I want the best-prepared officer that I can have in my Army.
SINGLE-SEX SCHOOLS: PROS AND CONS
What is it about a graduate of one of these institutions that you find a problem?
Barkalow: I have noticed, for example, that graduates - and not all, I won't stereotype all graduates of VMI because there are those who are thinking and do have the belief that men and women are equal - but there are those who do come out of those institutions who have trouble with women as, one, their peers and, two, women as their superiors.
Fogleman: We have what's called the adversity system of education at VMI, the self-doubting model, which really came out of the time of our Constitution, the prevailing academic form of how you would socialize and educate young men who are basically undisciplined and given to being undisciplined. And that is different from the so-called cooperative method, which is used at most women's colleges.
Both methods are geared to the developmental needs of adolescent males or females at the same ages. They come together after adolescence somewhere in their early 20s. That's why you don't see any single-sex graduate schools, because there is simply no pedagogical benefit to it.
So the experts said here at VMI it is a highly structured adversative system where, you know, it's kind of a ranking of seniority by how long you've been there.
Barkalow: Like West Point.
Fogleman: Yeah, but you are constantly in this crucible.
Barkalow: Like West Point.
Fogleman: Well, it's different from West Point.
How is it different, from your perspective?
Fogleman: Well, some of the methods used to discipline young men at VMI, if it were a male doing it to a woman, fit the federal legal guideline for sexual harassment. You can't get up close, you can't raise your voice, you can't drop them for push-ups, you can't do this, you can't do that. You can't confront them. That's just part of the trial record, Major. I know you disagree.
Barkalow: Yes, I do because, you see, I've lived it. OK? I've lived all of this. As you're starting to talk about these things, everything that you've mentioned, I've been made to do and I've survived. . . .
It's not sexual harassment, and you know that and I know that.
Fogleman: Well, you know, the point is, the egalitarian nature of VMI necessarily will change. The privacy or the lack thereof necessarily will change. Certainly, psychologists will tell you that adolescent males and females interact in a co-ed environment differently than they interact in a single-sex environment. . . .
The board of visitors looked at going co-ed in the mid-'80s. They sent a delegation to Annapolis and they studied how Annapolis adapted from being a male environment to a co-ed environment. And they determined that, well, you know, this is OK but it's not for VMI. We will lose the essential nature of what the VMI system is.
THE ``VMI EXPERIENCE'' UNDER ASSAULT
Anita Blair, let's get you on the record here as a member of the VMI board of visitors. In your view, what is it about VMI's mission that would be destroyed by the admission of women?
Anita Blair: I became involved in the case a couple of years ago through the group that I'm involved with, the Independent Women's Forum. And our original concern was that a legal determination that VMI was required to admit women would adversely affect women's colleges first and, secondly, single-sex programs of all types.
Because when you decide at a constitutional level that men and women must be put together or that sexual discrimination must be subjected to the same standard or review as racial discrimination, then we are necessarily going to lose the benefits of single-sex programs for both sexes. I think that's just the logical outcome.
What I believe VMI does for society that we can't afford to lose is to maintain the tradition of a form of education that works extremely well to socialize young men. It is not intended to do the same thing for young women, but it takes a certain proportion of our population of young males and does a wonderful job of turning them into responsible young adults.
I can't tell you how many times in the course of the last few years in meeting with alumni I've had the story told to me, ``Anita, VMI saved my life. I was a very headstrong boy and my mother found it very hard to control me. VMI taught me discipline, and that's why I'm so devoted to this school.''
It's not true of everybody by any means, but there is that unique benefit that a school like VMI provides to us that we ought not to lose.
Olander: I have heard that argument, actually. It's a kind of reform school argument. I have heard that lots of people who go to The Citadel are sent by parents who want to control them.
Why couldn't women receive the same benefits?
Blair: The question is not why couldn't they but why don't they? The fact is that women go to women's colleges and become leaders and get a certain benefit out of their education that they don't get out of a co-ed school. And that is the difference. The difference is, simply, our experience tells us women in a women's college environment typically benefit from a more cooperative method.
I don't believe that doing push-ups would have ever benefited me at any age.
Barkalow: But it's not about that. It's not about that. I went to West Point because I wanted to be an officer in the Army. I wanted to serve my country. But you know what I got in addition to that? West Point took me to my limit every day, physically, mentally and emotionally. And then it took me beyond. It took me beyond what I thought I had the potential to do. And it did that by stressing me 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for pretty much the whole four years I was there. That's the kind of education that there are those out there who are looking for.
Blair: But they are very few. They're very, very few, and we ought not to be building schools or rejecting traditions that we have simply for the sake of those very few people who think they can benefit from it. We do have lots of women, lots of women, who can benefit from a single-sex school. And I guarantee you that if this case is lost by VMI, the women's schools will have to go down the same route as VMI.
Barkalow: Why do you think a woman would want to go to VMI?
Fogleman: Well, I can't speak for a woman. I can speak for a man.
Barkalow: Why did you want to go?
Fogleman: I was interested in all that VMI was. I was interested in the ``rat'' system, I was interested in its history and its heritage and its traditions and the fact that it was a small school.
Barkalow: Yes. Now, not once did you say that it was all-male.
Fogleman: I was interested in that, too.
Barkalow: But suppose a woman wanted that same experience that you wanted?
Fogleman: If you want the same experience I had, then I think you would have to create a school of a thousand women and train them and teach them under the adversative system. And then I think you would fairly replicate the system that I went through.
THE FIGHT FOR RIGHTS: A NEW CHAPTER?
When Shannon Faulkner began classes at The Citadel, she entered under a court order, by a side entrance, escorted by four U.S. marshals. Now Virginia and South Carolina are trying to avoid gender integration by setting up these alternative programs. You may not like the term ``separate but equal,'' but certainly, that's the way they're being viewed. All of this conjures up memories of the fight to end racial segregation in the public schools in the South 40 years ago. Today, in hindsight, the South's recalcitrance is widely seen as legally and morally indefensible. Is there a parallel here?
Blair: It's not a real parallel.
Why not?
Blair: Because the color of your skin is truly an irrelevant characteristic. And that is what we determined legally when we enacted the civil rights laws and enforced those provisions of the Constitution.
However, your sex is relevant to some things. It is probably more relevant in a developmental stage for kids, and that is why we would endorse having single-sex programs in schools so that girls can get the things they need, boys can get the things they need. . . .
It is very dangerous to adopt a legal standard that effectively says men and women are the same.
Barkalow: You bring up a good point about kids going through school and, yes, the facts are clear. There is disparity between young girls and the type of attention they might get when boys and girls are mixed. And that's something, in my opinion, not to separate them but to work on that in our schools. To ensure that we do have that kind of attention and we do motivate both the boys and the girls. Because I think at an early age if boys and girls really do learn how to interact, really do learn to respect one another, I think we will go further as young adults.
I honestly believe it is about respect. I have a respect for men, and men have a respect for me. And I've bonded with men.
I was in Desert Storm with the 24th Infantry Division, and so I was around a lot of guys who were into combat arms, infantry, armor. Never been with women before. They had a problem with me until they saw that I could do the same things they could do. That I felt the same way they did about things and I endured. And that's what bonding is. Enduring the same hardships and the same dangers. Enduring the same stress.
And so that's why I think, for me, West Point was the best thing because I saw men cry. They saw me cry. It didn't mean they were weak. It didn't mean that they were a pansy or anything like that. It meant they had a tough time. I had a tough time. And what we did is, we pulled each other up and we got together and we got through it together.
Blair: But you're not everybody.
Barkalow: No, you're right.
Blair: And there are kids, for example, boys who grow up without a father who can really benefit, and this has been tried in several school systems, to establish classes of all boys with a male teacher to give these boys a masculine leadership figure and to take them away from showing off in front of the girls and so forth. And a lot of people believe that can be very helpful. But that kind of program is at risk.
Barkalow: But we can do that in grade school.
Blair: I agree with you that if you can do it at an earlier age, you may prevent problems later on, but we can't control everybody's life. We can't guarantee that every kid has a loving family from ages 1 through 5.
Barkalow: I agree. And not everybody should go to VMI.
Fogleman: Here's the problem. If VMI can't sustain itself, I mean, in lower schools, grade schools and primary education, there are far fewer single-sex environments and there will be no inclination to have a single-sex environment if it is not constitutional to publicly fund single-sex education. So I mean, that's what we're stuck with today. Can VMI sustain this and thereby sustain public funding of single-sex education? That's what this whole fight is about. MEMO: The full text of this discussion is available on the News page of Pilot
Online at the Internet address http://www.infi.net/pilot/
See Page A2 for more information.
ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
MOTOYA NAKAMURA
Freshman cadets - called rats - line up at Virginia Military
Institute.
Anita Blair, an Arlington attorney, is executive vice president of
the Independent Women's Forum. She serves on the Virginia Military
Institute Board of Visitors.
Renee Olander, supervisor of academic advising for Old Dominion
University's College of Arts and Letters, is on the executive board
of the Virginia Women's Political Caucus.
Stephen Fogelman, an Alexandria attorney, is a graduate of Virginia
Military Institute and first vice president of the VMI Alumni
Association.
Army Maj. Carol Barkalow was in the first class of women to attend
the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1976. She is stationed at
Fort Eustis.
FILE PHOTO
Mary Baldwin College students, from left, Ashley DiYorio, Trimble
Bailey, Kim Bond and Kristen VanWegan sign paperwork for the ROTC
program. Students in the Virginia Women's Institute for Leadership
do their ROTC training at VMI. The VWIL program is designed to
provide the same opportunity for women that Virginia Military
Institute provides for men.
Graphic
MILITARY SCHOOLS IN COURT: WHERE THE CASES STAND
Virginia Military Institute
U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser ruled in 1991 that the
Constitution permits VMI to bar women on grounds that it ``serves an
important state educational objective.''
A women's leadership program began operation this fall at Mary
Baldwin College, a private women's school in Staunton. The program
provides an alternative for women, allowing VMI to continue to
exclude them. A federal appeals court has upheld the program, but
the U.S. Justice Department, which sued to get VMI's males-only
policy overthrown, has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the
case.
The Citadel
U.S. District Judge C. Weston Houck declared the school's
all-male policy unconstitutional in 1994.
Last April, a federal appeals court told The Citadel to admit
Shannon Faulkner as a cadet this fall. She withdrew after a week,
citing stress.
Next, Houck will hear testimony about whether the state's $10
million plan to create a women's program at Converse College, a
private college in Spartanburg, S.C., will satisfy constitutional
concerns about unequal educational opportunities for men and women.
KEYWORDS: WOMEN IN THE MILITARY MILITARY ACADEMIES
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