The Virginia Military Institute is no Walden Pond. Trust me on this. I have been to the school and seen it in all of its spartan, neo-Gothic plainness.
Nevertheless, federal Judge Jackson L. Kiser invoked the spirit of Henry David Thoreau when he upheld the right of this college to bar women. He said: ”VMI truly marches to the beat of a different drummer and I will permit it to continue to do so.”
A different drummer? Any drummer at VMI is probably playing John Philip Sousa. The row of cannons, the Stonewall Jackson statue, the parades, the institutionalized hazing, the rigid hierarchy are not what the Concord philosopher had in mind when he sang the praises of non-conformity.
But the misuse of Thoreau`s words is just a part of the strange tale of the VMI case. Ever since a girl asked for admittance to the 152-year-old state military academy, an entire battalion of men have tried to protect their tradition. They`ve done it by speaking the language of those who pressed for change.
A year ago in a campus interview, the gentlemanly superintendent, Gen. John Knapp, based his claim to remain all-male on the values of ”diversity” and ”equality.” Diversity among institutions, that is, and equality among men.
In court this spring, the VMI lawyer-Robert Patterson, himself a graduate-argued that the school should be saved from the government`s desire for ”needless conformity.” It should be given ”the same protection as the spotted owl and six-legged salamander.”
There was no attempt to deny sex discrimination, no attempt to prove that women can`t perform in a military academy. Underlying the argument was the notion that we have come so far in changing society that places like VMI and The Citadel in South Carolina are an endangered species. Even VMI`s famed
”rat line” system-the ritual abuse of freshmen ”rats”-was more to be saved than censored.
You don`t have to read far to catch the subtext: Male bastions have been so successfully breached, their power so eroded, that what was once the establishment is now the last alternative. What was once the norm is now daringly different. A drumroll, please.
The VMI that I visited did seem much more of an anachronism than a threat. But the attempt to portray the institution as beleaguered, up against a feminist wall, may ring a bit hollow in a state where VMI grads form a powerful old-boy network.
What is going on is very much in keeping with the current passion to compete for the role of victim-especially the victim of reverse discrimination or political correctness. VMI hasn`t taken quite so much pride in being an underdog since the Battle of New Market when their Confederate school boys took on the Yankees.
The other argument is the one usually put forward by all-women`s colleges. Judge Kiser sounded like a brochure from Smith when he concluded that ”providing a distinctive, single-sex educational opportunity is more important than providing an education equally available to all.” Lawyer Patterson kept talking about Wellesley: ”There`s evidence that single sex schools are very beneficial.”
But while all-male and all-female colleges do hang together on some of the same arguments-they both talk about the value of educational options-they make very strange bedfellows. Most women`s colleges put themselves in the avant-garde of women`s rights, while VMI and the Citadel defend what is most benignly called a traditional male environment.
Legally, the women`s colleges are private, while VMI is publicly funded to the tune of $8 million a year. Virginia`s taxpayers are forking over money to a school that bars their daughters. That`s the very essence of illegal sex discrimination. It`s likely that the district court decision will be overturned in a higher court. But it`s not certain.
Meanwhile, Judge Kiser has decided that we all have something to lose if the last ”rat” disappears from the educational environment. The interest in saving these rodents overrides the interest in equal opportunity.
Frankly, I doubt that the rat would be any more deeply mourned than that other extinct species, Jim Crow. Some traditions need honoring. Some need burying.
If VMI can`t evolve, then perhaps it can be a museum, a Sturbridge Village of Ye Olde Male Ways of Doing Things. Look kids, see the young men in uniforms shave each other`s heads. See the older students heaping abuse upon the younger.
Hey, Pops, where were all the women?
