THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, July 16, 1996 TAG: 9607160311
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B9 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LEXINGTON LENGTH: 68 lines
Virginia Military Institute alumni who don't want women admitted to their 157-year-old alma mater could ask the General Assembly to decide whether VMI should be a public or private school.
It won't be the first time the legislature has considered the question.
In 1928, the House of Delegates assembled for a public hearing on the public vs. private issue before a packed chamber, mostly VMI supporters. The difference was that Gov. Harry F. Byrd and the VMI alumni were opposed to a bid to make the school private.
``The VMI has never failed Virginia, and I pray Virginia will never fail the VMI,'' Byrd said in defense of keeping VMI state-supported.
Last month, the Supreme Court ruled in a sex-discrimination lawsuit the Justice Department filed against VMI that as a state-owned school, VMI must admit women. The private alumni board is preparing a report on privatizing VMI that will be presented to the board of visitors on Sept. 21. The board will then vote on whether to make the college coed or make it private.
In 1927, a state commission was formed to study higher education. It included four legislators along with academic experts from around the country and was chaired by Del. Robert T. Barton from Winchester.
The Barton commission recommended that VMI become private and rent the campus for $1 a year. Other colleges were doing a better job teaching liberal arts and engineering, the report concluded.
``Aside from the military features of its program,'' the commission report said, ``there is no educational service being rendered at Virginia Military Institute which is not already duplicated . . . at the other tax-supported institutions.''
The Barton commission said the VMI recommendation was ``a most difficult task.''
``Many of the most distinguished military, as well as civic leaders of Virginia and of the nation, have received their education at the institute,'' the report said. ``But the need for the particular type of education which is found at Virginia Military Institute has largely passed.''
The commission members concluded that VMI should be financed solely by tuition and fees and private donations. If the college failed to survive on its own, the state should take over the campus and turn it into a vocational school, they said.
Military training at VMI for young men preparing for civilian life was excessive, the commission said, and ``impinges greatly upon the time that the student should give to real intellectual or vocational preparation.''
VMI rallied its troops. The Alumni Association called upon all ex-cadets and supporters to ``expose the injustices and unfairness of its recommendations'' and attend the public hearing.
A few days later, the House voted 72-15 to reject legislation that would have withdrawn state funding for VMI.
On the campus, which reveres history and tradition, however, the Barton Commission dispute is virtually unknown.
``I've never heard of that,'' said Blair Turner, chairman of VMI's history department.
Edwin Dooley, secretary of the VMI Board of Visitors, thought the state was thinking about selling the campus to the Marine Corps after reports that cadets were mistreating first-year students known as ``rats.''
``VMI was suffering from some bad publicity from some hazing incidents,'' Dooley said.
But after looking it up in a book on VMI history, Dooley found that the move to withdraw state funding from VMI had more to do with post-World War I pacifism than the hazing problems.
KEYWORDS: VMI by CNB