
DATE: Wednesday, August 20, 1997            TAG: 9708200400

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: FROM WIRE REPORTS 

DATELINE: LEXINGTON, VA.                    LENGTH:  125 lines

VMI'S RAT LINE: ONLY THE FITTEST AND MOST COMMITTED ENDURE

The Rat Line, the initiation ritual that will make or break the first women and some men at Virginia Military Institute, begins at 1300 hours (1 p.m.) sharp today in the grim, gray concrete courtyard of the school barracks.

The cadre - uniformed drill masters in sharply pressed military uniforms - will march slowly into the midst of 459 terrified freshmen, or ``rats,'' standing at attention. Upper-class cadets arrayed on five stories of walkways jeer at the captive kids with shaved heads.

Suddenly, the cadre breaks ranks, getting nose-to-nose with the recruits and literally spitting orders and barking questions.

Welcome to the Rat Line, a six-month tribulation that tests the limits of physical, emotional and mental endurance. Only the fittest, most committed will make it.

VMI lost its first student of the academic year Tuesday, even before the Rat Line started, when an unidentified young man left post about an hour after signing the matriculation book but before his scheduled buzz cut.

Every year there are dropouts, but this year - the first in VMI's 158 years - the presence of women puts the school's honor at stake.

The Rat system is one of the oldest traditions of the institute although its exact beginnings have not been documented.

Alumni reflect on their time in it with a strange mixture of bravado and quietude. And, of course, every new generation of VMI graduates believes its Rat Line was the tough one and the school somehow has softened since its members passed through.

The purpose is to render every incoming rat equally lowly, VMI officials say, and then to build them back up into citizen-soldiers and members of a class that has developed its own internal cohesion and unity.

The process begins with the spare beat of a bass drum.

The rats line up facing each other on either side of the barracks courtyard. A cadre of upperclassmen - all of them once rats themselves - marches in, glowering, coming to a halt between the two rat lines. They are introduced: ``This is your cadre. They will teach and you will learn.'' The upperclassmen are then unleashed, sprinting toward the freshmen, and pouncing.

Nose to nose with the rats, whose faces quickly become wet with spittle and sweat, the upperclassmen scream and taunt, demanding push-ups for the smallest perceived infraction. They then hustle rats from one task to the next, such as getting measured for uniforms and learning how to drill. The first week is the worst; classes haven't started yet so there is no refuge. The bustle and haranguing continues from reveille to taps. Emergency medical technicians stand by for those who collapse from heat or exhaustion or both.

Within the first five days, 4 percent of rats drop out and they continue dropping out through the first year until 24 percent are gone.

Rats learn to travel in packs to and from their rooms to reduce the opportunity for harassment; an isolated rat making his way from the courtyard to his or her room on the fourth floor of barracks is a delicious invitation for in-the-face questioning and a demand for push-ups. In barracks, rats must ``strain'' - keeping their chins to their collarbones - and walk double-time in straight lines.

VMI officials say the Rat Line will remain unchanged for the first co-ed class. After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year the state-supported school must open to women, officials vowed to fully accommodate female cadets without changing physical requirements or diluting the ritual.

Monday, VMI officials stressed to parents that the school no longer allows physical brutality. The earliest rats weren't as lucky. George C. Marshall, class of 1901, was made to squat over a bayonet to test his endurance. He slipped, cut his buttocks and narrowly escaped serious injury.

If students entering the Rat Line today follow the long-established pattern, they will transform themselves over six months.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, the rats begin to rebel - through smiles shared with each other, through developing a sense of humor about the theatricality of it all, through minor acts of defiance.

One year a group of rats snuck out at night and managed to stick a cannon through the first-floor window of a room for upperclassmen.

Such pranks signal that the rats are ready to become a class and break out of the line, VMI officials believe. It ends with a ceremony where rats climb a hill that has been turned to pure mud.

``They stretch you and stretch you. And then they release you,'' said Sam Witt, class of 1958, ``You learn something about yourself. And you form these bonds that last a lifetime, which is about the only justification for the admitted silliness of it all.''

For six years, VMI spent millions of dollars fighting in court to keep women out. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last summer that VMI can't accept public money and exclude females. Now, under scrutiny from the media and the Justice Department, the nation's last all-male, state-supported college is trying to integrate women into its harsh regimen without sexually harassing them.

A few women will leave, but their dropout rate should be comparable to the men, Superintendent Josiah Bunting said.

On Tuesday, just before dawn, half of the school's first coed class got its first taste of military drills with an hourlong round of pushups, situps and a 1 1/2-mile run in formation.

The young women kept up with the young men as upperclassmen barked orders.

VMI is trying to avoid the embarrassment The Citadel suffered in 1995 when Shannon Faulkner became the first woman to enter the state-supported military school in Charleston, S.C. Faulkner dropped out after one week, citing stress and her isolation as the only woman in a hostile male corps.

Four more women joined The Citadel last August, but two dropped out in January alleging hazing by male upperclassmen.

VMI began preparing for women after the Supreme Court decision. Its cadets and faculty were required to attend sessions last spring on how to avoid sexual harassment. It hired female counselors and it revamped part of its barracks.

The women at VMI will have strength in numbers. With 30 females enrolled, they can turn to one another for support and understanding during the demanding first year.

They also understand what they face. VMI sent each new student an 11-minute video during the summer that explicitly shows the hardships of the Rat Line.

``There's no free time,'' Col. Mike Bissell, director of the court-ordered assimilation effort, told them Tuesday. ``You're in a military environment 24 hours a day. You've got a six-month, grueling Rat Line. Who wants to go through that? Young men and women who want discipline.'' MEMO: This story was compiled from reports by The Associated Press and

The Washington Post. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Kim Herbert, left, of Herndon, Va., and others get instruction from

a member of the VMI cadre during Tuesday's 6 a.m. physical training

session.

Photo

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Freshman Maria Vasile of Tucson, Ariz., waits for the welcoming

statement from VMI Superintendent Josiah Bunting on Monday. Bunting

said he expects the dropout rate for women to be comparable to that

of the men.