THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, October 6, 1995 TAG: 9510060541
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: FROM WIRE REPORTS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines
Delving into an unusual gender-discrimination case, the Supreme Court voted Thursday to decide whether to admit women to the venerable all-male Virginia Military Institute - or restrict them to attending a separate but comparable program at a college for females only.
Government lawyers liken the woman's program to the discredited ``separate but equal'' doctrine of racial segregation, and women's groups warn that allowing VMI to remain all-male would again permit states to route men and women into different educational and career paths.
Both views are disputed by Virginia and VMI.
The Supreme Court justices will hear oral arguments on the 6-year-old sex-discrimination suit in January.
A ruling is due by July, but the court could find itself evenly divided.
Justice Clarence Thomas announced he will not participate in the case because his son Jamal is a senior at VMI.
The high court's ruling would have little direct, nationwide impact because there are only four other single-sex public colleges.
However, some lawyers said, if worded broadly enough, the court ruling could indirectly affect private single-sex schools - male or female - that accept government money or tax breaks, single-sex athletic programs in state-supported schools and proposals in some cities to set up separate schools for boys.
One of the remaining single-sex colleges is The Citadel, an all-male military school in Charleston, S.C., which has been challenged by Shannon Faulkner in a case awaiting a Supreme Court decision on whether to grant review. The other three schools are all-female colleges in New Jersey, Texas and Mississippi.
VMI was founded 154 years ago in Lexington, Va., making it the oldest military college in the nation.
It is most famous as the place where Confederate Gen. Thomas ``Stonewall'' Jackson taught, and whose best-known graduate is Gen. George C. Marshall, a military leader in World War II and an illustrious diplomat afterward.
But now VMI, which boasts the largest per-student endowment of any U.S. undergraduate institution, may become better known for its refusal to allow women to participate in its unusually regimented, spartan and stressful programs designed to produce ``citizen-soldiers'' - all of them men.
After a female high school student seeking admission to VMI complained, the Bush administration sued Virginia and VMI in 1990. The U.S. government argued that VMI's males-only admissions policy violated the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection of the laws.
A Richmond-based federal appeals court agreed but said the constitutional violation could be remedied if the school set up a parallel program elsewhere.
Virginia then proposed a separate Virginia Women's Institute for Leadership (VWIL) at Mary Baldwin College, a private women's college in Staunton, Va.
Despite the acknowledged differences between VMI and VWIL education, the appeals court upheld the separate women's program as ``substantively comparable.''
In August, 42 heavily-recruited freshmen entered the Virginia Women's Institute for Leadership. Mary Baldwin College president Cynthia Tyson on Thursday reaffirmed her oft-stated position that the college backs VMI.
``Research tells us, and our experience reaffirms, that single-sex education can be the best option for many young women,'' Tyson said in a statement, adding that ``we welcome'' the Supreme Court scrutiny.
Former Norfolk Mayor Vincent J. Thomas, an outspoken defender of his alma mater, said he thought the Supreme Court would have waited a bit longer before hearing the case.
``I thought, having gone as far as we had with the (Mary Baldwin) program, that they would have given it a little more time to gel,'' said Thomas.
He claimed that VMI's case is better than that of the Citadel's and also lacks the high profile public relations image that Shannon Faulkner gave to the Citadel's fight.
That should help, he said.
The Clinton administration, seeking to open VMI to women, has accused the lower court of resorting to ``sex stereotypes'' and ``archaic notions about women'' to justify ``vastly different'' programs for men and women. MEMO: Landmark News Service, Knight-Ridder, and staff writer Jack Dorsey
contributed to this report. by CNB