THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 19, 1996 TAG: 9610190278
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LEXINGTON, VA. LENGTH: 54 lines
Angelica Garza and Amy Abraham are spending the weekend at Virginia Military Institute to learn what life will be like as Sister Rats.
``This is obviously a very unusual college,'' VMI Superintendent Josiah Bunting told the two women and 54 men attending the first coed open house for prospective students. Students are called Rats during their freshmen year.
The Supreme Court ruled that excluding women at state-supported VMI is unconstitutional, and the board voted last month to admit women rather than try to become a private college.
Before getting a tour of the 157-year-old campus Friday, with barracks and academic buildings that look like fortresses, Garza and Abraham had to weave through a gantlet of television cameras.
``I don't see what the big deal is,'' Abraham said. ``We're just normal people who are wanting to look at a great college.''
Garza, who lives in Northern Virginia, refused to answer questions, and Abraham, a Tennessee resident, spoke just briefly about her interest in VMI. They declined to reveal their hometowns.
``The reason I'm applying to VMI is not because I'm a women's-libber and that women have to go where males are, and stuff,'' Abraham said. ``VMI's honor and integrity and leadership training, I feel, can develop you as a whole person, and that's what college needs to do.''
VMI holds six open houses each year for prospective students. They are told about the physical and mental rigors cadets experience and even watch an upperclassman harass a Rat, although the performance is scripted.
``We don't want to spring this stuff on them when they get here,'' VMI spokesman Mike Strickler said. ``We want them to know what it's really like.''
The high school seniors spend one night in the spartan barracks, but an exception was made for the two women. They stayed in a building next door, where the wooden cots used by cadets were the only pieces of furniture brought into the empty rooms. A chaperone, a female ROTC instructor, slept with them.
The two women haven't filled out applications to VMI. The first woman to formally apply to VMI is Brooke A. Elliott, who decided to apply only after administrators said they would not soften the school's training to accommodate women.
Elliott submitted her application last week.
VMI hopes to enroll about 30 women next year. Nearly 200 female high school seniors have inquired about attending since the Supreme Court decision in June. ILLUSTRATION: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Cadets escort Amy Abraham of Tennessee to her room at VMI on Friday.
She and another woman, from northern Virginia, were among 56
prospective students attending the school's first coed open house in
Lexington, Va., this weekend. by CNB