DATE: Monday, August 18, 1997               TAG: 9708180050

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A11  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: COLUMBIA, S.C.                    LENGTH:   44 lines

ALUMNI FROM CITADEL, VMI PROPOSE FOUNDING A PRIVATE ALL-MALE COLLEGE

Alumni of The Citadel and Virginia Military Institute say they will create a private, men-only Christian college now that the courts have forced their publicly funded military schools to accept women, a newspaper reported Sunday.

Mike Guthrie, a VMI graduate leading the effort, said the Southern Military Institute would be an ``overtly politically incorrect institution,'' emphasizing military traditions of the Confederacy.

``We intend to create an institution that will preserve the traditions of both Virginia Military Institute and The Citadel,'' Guthrie told The State, a Columbia newspaper.

The Citadel and VMI fought for years to keep women out, but their battle ended last year when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down VMI's all-male policy.

Last fall, The Citadel in Charleston immediately took in four female cadets, while the Lexington, Va., college took an extra year to prepare. Thirty-one women are to arrive at VMI today.

A seven-page proposal by Guthrie estimates that the Southern Military Institute would cost $100 million to launch and could begin enrolling cadets in 2004. The plan includes about 1,000 cadets organized into three battalions.

``There was substantial sentiment out there among alumni and the public for maintaining an all-male VMI and an all-male Citadel,'' said Thomas Moncure Jr., who quit the VMI Board of Visitors to protest the admission of women. ``We're going to see just how strong that sentiment is.''

Cadets at SMI would attend religious services of their choice and would complete Christian-based ``moral leadership training.''

James Jones, former chairman of The Citadel's Board of Visitors who supported enrolling women, questioned whether SMI's private status would protect it from having to admit women.

``If something is unconstitutional, then it's unconstitutional on a private basis as well as on a public basis,'' he said. ``My sense is that the idea of single-gender education such as that provided at the nation's 80-plus all-female institutions is going to be challenged in court in the coming years.''

Guthrie, however, is optimistic.

He said there is a market for such a school, and he would like to place SMI in a location central to all Southern states, possibly northern Alabama.

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