THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 16, 1996 TAG: 9610160010
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: 33 lines
Early signs that Virginia Military Institute is embarking on a serious effort to bring women to its campus are seeping out of Lexington.
This is good - not to mention legally imperative - news.
Terri Wheaton Reddings, an assistant director of admissions at Radford University, has been named to an equivalent post at VMI. At the institute, she'll head a nationwide recruitment effort to reach female high-school juniors and seniors with an interest in the military, engineering or some other VMI major.
Meanwhile, VMI Superintendent Josiah Bunting III indicates that he intends to expand women faculty from the current male-female ratio of about 12-to-1. And he is looking to hire a female assistant to the commandant, VMI's equivalent of a dean of students.
All this says that the institute is on course to identify and lure the 30 or more women that Bunting hopes will be in next year's ``Rat'' pack.
Still, there's no doubt that persuading women to buck 157 years of tradition and plenty of suppressed (hopefully) hostility is going to be a tough sale. There are, as yet, no female applicants among the 50 or so who've sent in paperwork. About 200 women have inquired.
Despite the tough talk that surrounded last month's decision to go coed, VMI should and must press ahead to meet the U.S. Supreme Court's mandate. Once the concept of women at VMI starts to have a human face, change is likely to become less threatening and more tolerable. The hiring of Terri Reddings is a laudable first step in a long march. by CNB