DATE: Monday, August 25, 1997               TAG: 9708220017

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B9   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: OPINION 

SOURCE: SUZANNE FIELDS

DATELINE: LOS ANGELES                       LENGTH:   79 lines

IDEOLOGY IS ALL

Virginia Military Institute is safe from the worst humiliation for a newly coed military institution. A woman in its first coed class will not be the first to drop out, as Shannon Faulkner at The Citadel.

A male freshman beat her to it. The place is tough for both guys and dolls. About 5 percent of the freshman class, known as rats, usually drop out the first week, and close to 25 percent by the spring.

The administrators at VMI have taken more care than The Citadel did. They spent a year teaching male cadets what was expected of them to follow the orders of the U. S. Supreme Court, mandating the admission of women in their state-supported school. They enrolled 30 women, not 1. This enables women to enjoy the support of their sisters.

So far, so good.

But it's still difficult to see how this coed integration is a triumph of feminism. Why any woman welcomes the discipline of humiliation by upperclassmen, who will abuse her in ways that would be considered sexual harassment in another setting, is stupefying.

A larger question is the significant one: Will women at VMI change the nature of the training? Unlike the other military academies, VMI officials say they won't allow ``gender norming'' - diluting the physical and psychological exercises for women so that women can meet them.

Observers are warned not to make too much of the haircut differences - women get to keep an extra half-inch on top and 3/8ths of an inch more on the side. Such cuts do not Miss America make.

It's the long haul of change that VMI men worry about most. Will the school begin to appeal to a different kind of man and woman? The first female recruits tend to be a lot like the old male recruits - from military families who take pride in the traditions of VMI going back to Stonewall Jackson and George C. Marshall. The women are quick to tell interviewers that they wouldn't be at VMI if they thought they would change it.

But already feminist activists fret that VMI wants to turn the women into men without exploiting unique skills the females may have in a killing machine. It's no secret that a feminized military, plagued with double standards and sexual harassment, is having trouble recruiting quality male recruits in the numbers they want, which in turn makes them more dependent on recruiting women, who will drive more men away.

When women flood a traditional male trade or profession, the public status and salary decline. This may be changing, but it remains true at a place like VMI.

``This first group of women is the cream of the crop, but we'll only attract groundbreakers like that for the first year,'' Thomas Moncure, class of '73, told The Washington Post. ``After that, why would you go there, male or female?''

There's tyranny behind the attitude of certain feminists who want women to gain choices by narrowing choices for men - and certain young women, too. In a mindless defense of ``equality,'' the National Organization for Women (NOW) wants to deprive girls in East Harlem, N.Y., from attending an all-girl public school where academic success for girls is a direct result of keeping boys out.

The Young Woman's Leadership School, which last year admitted 56 seventh graders who attained the best attendance record in the district, wants to expand this year with eighth and ninth grades. But it won't happen if NOW and the American Civil Liberties Union prevail. They are charging the school with sex discrimination.

We must forget the feminist tracts about how adolescent girls fall behind when boys are in the classroom. Ideology becomes all. Ann Conners, president of NOW in New York, told the Wall Street Journal that ``separate but equal is not OK.'' Who cares about equal?

We must forget statistics that show how men and women thrive in separate but equal single sex institutions, both public and private. Feminist principle must prevail, even against the proof that boys hog the negative attention of the teacher at the expense of the girls.

The triumph of women at VMI and the failure of an all-girls public school in East Harlem may prove only that young women will learn how to compete with men in hogging negative attention. You might call it the rat-ification of feminism.

MEMO: Ms. Fields' column is distributed by the Los Angeles Times

Syndicate, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, Calif. 90053.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu