DATE: Thursday, November 6, 1997            TAG: 9711060469

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B9   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON POST 

DATELINE: LEXINGTON                         LENGTH:   29 lines

FOURTH FEMALE, AND 42ND MALE, HAVE DECIDED TO LEAVE VMI

A fourth woman has voluntarily quit the Virginia Military Institute, leaving 25 women in the school's first coeducational class.

Amanda Kaufman, 18, of Alexandria, left VMI on Tuesday afternoon after deciding that the school's rigorous, six-month initiation process known as the Rat Line was not for her, sources at the school said.

``There was nothing complicated about her departure. She just decided she wanted to go,'' said a VMI spokesman, declining to provide further details.

VMI also lost its 42nd male freshman on Tuesday, officials said.

The Lexington school now has 387 men and 25 women from the 430 men and 30 women who entered the Rat Line 11 weeks ago. A fifth woman, Angelica Garza, of Fort Belvoir, was suspended from the school for punching an upperclassman in late August, and one male freshman left the school for a year because he was called up to active service by the Army Reserve.

Officials at the school said the attrition rates of 10.2 percent for all freshmen and 16.6 percent among the women compare with a freshman attrition rate of 10.9 percent for the same period last year.

Kaufman's mother declined to comment Wednesday and said her daughter didn't wish to discuss her experience at VMI.

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