Crashing VMI's Line
Norman, Geoffrey
"Crashing VMI's Line" PROGRESSIVE FORCES WOULD STOP AT NOTHING TO SEE THAT SINGLE-SEX EDUCATION—FOR MEN—CAME TO AN END AT THE VIRGINIA MILITARY INSTITUTE. OF COURSE WHAT THEY REALLY WANT IS TO DESTROY THE FABLED SCHOOL...
...Four female cadets entered the Citadel in late August...
...One indication is the number of distinguished military men who have come from VMI...
...Other justices were typically opaque...
...Private Jefferson died on the field of honor, Sir...
...Puller enlisted in the Marines...
...The cadets moved up to plug a gap in the Confederate line, taking fire...
...He voted reluctantly in the majority...
...The Neanderthals won the first round, in 1991, when a U.S...
...They marched in perfect alignment, looking like the nineteenth century on review...
...CNN, the Washington Post, Newsweek...
...Box 31274 • Tampa, FL 33633-0537 • Dept...
...The Justice Department lawyers who were arguing the case, and the eight Supreme Court justices found abstract legal arguments compelling...
...But if he comes here, he'll find the discipline, the support, the attention, and the caring he needs...
...He was the Adjutant General of the State of Virginia and, hence, a federal officer...
...The question, it seems, was whether states could support traditionally black schools or all-women schools with scholarships and loans, whether private single-sex schools (there are eighty, virtually all women's schools) would lose their tax exempt status and loans, and so forth...
...The kind of people who could not abide the war lover in Patton or Puller would inevitably find in Marshall a soldier to admire...
...VMI's supporters argued that the academies had to lower standards for women, who were not required to run with weapons during physical training, among other concessions to their lack of upper-body strength...
...But it is not like the federal service academies where the cadets and midshipmen pay no tuition and are actually active duty members of the Army, Navy, or Air Force who can be compelled to serve an enlisted hitch if they flunk out of school...
...When the journalist gave him an uncomprehending look, Bunting explained, "It is an A.E...
...And if there were hurt feelings at VWIL, then for the supporters of VMI the ruling was, in Josiah Bunting's words, "a savage disappointment...
...Phallocrats or worse...
...Life at VMI is both martial and monastic...
...The Citadel, which was also affected by the ruling, announced two days later that it would open its doors to women for the nextschool term, some of whom had already applied...
...They sleep on folding cots and a thin mattress—called a "hay"—which which is rolled up every morning after reveille...
...they were too powerful...
...The admission of women capable of all the activities required of VMI cadets...
...The grounds are well tended but austere...
...So you are resting your case on the proposition that this is a valuable kind of education that serves a distinctive kind of person rather than producing a distinctive kind of product...
...Supreme Court...
...Patton supposedly said that if you gave him a bunch of men from the Citadel he would win a battle, but if you gave him a group from VMI, he would win a war...
...Scalia's tough language was balm, no doubt, to the wounds of the VMI faithful...
...You would be surprised by the number of cadets who say they came here precisely because there are no women in the school...
...and he knows that...
...VMI would almost certainly lose, he wrote, and we would all be poorer for it...
...Estimates of what is appropriate for most women no longer justify denying opportunity to women whose talent and capacity place them outside the average description...
...When a cigar can make you forget Havana, that's true one-Upmannship...
...Naval Academy and asked some questions about how women were treated there, the U.S...
...This could, of course, be interpreted according to your preconceptions...
...The Justice Department did not and appealed again, but in January 1995, a three-judge panel from the 4th Circuit ruled 2-1 in VMI's favor...
...Today the court shuts down an institution that has served the people of the Commonwealth of Virginia with pride and distinction for over a century and a half...
...He fought in Vietnam, in the 9th Infantry Division...
...Then he returned to the United States with a commission in the Army...
...The various lawyers and justices spent a lot of time discussing whether the program at Mary Baldwin measured up and pretty clearly decided that it did not...
...Those questions were never entirely answered...
...The New York Times headlined the VMI decision this way: "Defiant VMI to Admit Women But Will Not Ease Rules For Them"—even though Ginsberg had written that there was no need to ease the rules...
...Examined dispassionately, VMI is merely one of many little schools that have found a niche, an identity...
...There are little liberal arts schools like Antioch and there are traditional all-black schools like Grambling and there are expensive centers of free-thinking and free love like Bennington...
...But, to continue the biological metaphor, it is an evolutionary success...
...Remember, they ask to come here and they pay...
...Regular Retail $27.00...
...They would be the last to enter the old VMI and, to mark the occasion, the media swarmed the barracks...
...A married man and a father...
...Meanwhile, Shannon Faulkner won her fight to attend theCitadel, South Carolina's equivalent of VMI, and in 1995, she arrived in Charleston thirty pounds overweight and roundly despised by all her future classmates...
...The vote, when it came on June 26, was surprisingly one-sided — 7 to 1, with only Antonin Scalia favoring VMI...
...The largest question was—would the school go private...
...In January 1996 the Court heard arguments, and for six months VMI supporters told each other, gamely, that they just might pull it out, 5-4...
...A Washington Post columnist wrote that VMI existed in a "medieval time warp, in which brotherhood is forged through sadomasochistic rituals in a forgotten monastery supported by the state for its own Byzantine purposes...
...The school's board of visitors, which would make the final decision on whether or not to go private, was divided...
...It was put in the cadets or lose the battle...
...And why not...
...When the Court heard the VMI case, Thomas's son was a cadet there...
...passed through the arch and saluted Jackson's statue...
...The action did not change history...
...And, indeed, the Washington Post didn't seem to know the difference between the Army and the Marine Corps...
...Women would have to do eighteen push-ups in two minutes...
...Housman word that implies a custom of virtue and gracious action...
...But both men felt a bond with the Institute...
...It would be different, Bunting said, if women were admitted...
...These days, only about 40 percent of the graduates take commissions...
...The Civil War had become a general conflict by then...
...VMI's enemies liked to point to the service academies, which had been admitting women since 1973...
...After being called out of their bunks in the middle of the night, the entire Corps of Cadets from VMI marched four days to serve as rear guard and reserve for the Confederate forces...
...Patton transferred to West Point...
...sometimes one-on-one and sometimes in groups...
...The battle began in 1989 when, according to the court papers, a woman from somewhere in Northern Virginia discovered her application to the school would not be considered...
...VMI spent some $io million to fight what came to be known as "the court case...
...The battle of New Market was a Confederate victory, and the charge of the VMI cadets had turned the tide...
...Then, as secretary of state, he administered the rebuilding of Europe and won a Nobel Peace Prize...
...A reasonable person might look at those words and think that by merely putting doors on some bathrooms and saying to women that they were welcome, VMI had complied...
...During the Supreme Court hearings, hairs were split with the usual lawyerly precision...
...This is something that they want and it is something that has been successful...
...Neither actually graduated from VMI...
...All they want to talk about is women in the Rat Line and all they want you to say is something that will make you look stupid...
...After an undistinguished high-school career in Philadelphia, Bunting enlisted in the Marine Corps...
...The VMI administration decided to fight and you have to wonder if they thought they had a chance in court...
...The effect on the Virginia Military Institute, however, was incalculable...
...There was strong, if minority, support for taking the school private...
...Deval Patrick, assistant attorney general for civil rights, had compared the case to Brown v. Board of Education...
...Increasingly, in the days before the critical meeting of the board of visitors, the feeling seemed to be for compliance...
...The cadets use public toilets and gang showers...
...They are the ones who are stupid...
...Print All Digits) Exp...
...He was mortally wounded in the battle...
...There are some 150,000 students enrolled in fifteen publicly supported colleges and universities in the state of Virginia...
...And the response: "Corporal Atwill died on the field of honor, Sir...
...From A company, a call went out, very clear on the morning air: "Corporal Atwill...
...The Justice Department appealed to the U.S...
...They were ready to back up their opposition with cash...
...The cost of doing so was put at anywhere from loo to 30o million dollars...
...She complained, and the Justice Department filed suit...
...It was held by a minority, but it was compelling to them...
...The Corps had marched in every previous inauguration since that of William Howard Taft...
...asked David Souter...
...VMI could: (a) let women in...
...There are thousands of colleges in the United States and many of these small schools resemble organisms looking for a niche in some chaotic evolutionary struggle...
...His words—"You may be whatever you resolve to be" —are carved in the stone above the arch...
...Jackson commanded a detachment of cadets who served as a security force during the execution of John Brown...
...It was never any secret that many of those who were for admitting women to VMI despised the school and all it stood for...
...Shortly after the Thomas confirmation controversy came the episode known as "Tailhook...
...They were, respectively, the most celebrated Army and Marine warriors of this century...
...The loyalty of VMI alumni is both fierce and instructive...
...There were two sets of standards, in other words, that attempted to satisfy the requirement of "equality," by gender norming...
...If the school went private, then the Defense Department could be counted on to remove the three ROTC programs from VMI...
...But there were problems, not the least of which was money...
...In October 1992, the 4th Circuit Court kicked the case back to the district court and gave it four options...
...VMI, meanwhile, was still studying its options...
...Of first importance, there was the matter of ROTC to consider...
...And he'll believe that it wouldn't have been possible without VMI...
...For freshmen, or "Rats," it is worse...
...But, as Josiah Bunting said to a reporter, "The whole thing would take on a sort of Gilbert and Sullivan aspect...
...Though VMI was pretty much the same place it had always been, a lot had happened in six years...
...It is a military school...
...As summer wore on and discussions proceeded, the issue became one of "Which course will result in the fewest lawsuits...
...Private Haynes died on the field of honor, Sir...
...They were required to run two miles in under i8 minutes and 54 seconds...
...On Saturday, September 21, the board met and voted 9-8 to admit women...
...They included David Riesman and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, who had written and testified on VMI's side during the court case...
...Pregnant cadets would not be immediately required to leave school...
...They can play taps at VMI...
...Supporters, however, still hoped for a 4-4 ruling, since a tie would be as good as a win in this game...
...VMI was for men only...
...c) create an equivalent program for women...
...Ginsberg dismissed the VWIL program for women at Mary Baldwin College as a "'parallel program' with faculty less impressively credentialed and less well paid, more limited course offerings, fewer opportunities for military training...
...But it was hard to consider the vote anything more than a formality...
...Tensions increased...
...But the clouds thinned just enough, and at 10:00 a.m., the drums began beating cadence and the cadets marched out through Jackson Arch in ranks and in step...
...One of the VWIL's administrators said huffily that she found this put-down "offensive and uncalled for...
...Then to B company: "Private Haynes...
...In May 1994, the District Court judge who originally ruled in favor of VMI accepted the plan...
...On another occasion, over beer and hamburgers, Bunting told a journalist that he thought the word for what VMI taught was "thew...
...You start changing around the edges to make it work for women, make it "rational," you start pulling at the threads of the fabric and the whole thing comes unwoven...
...Or...they were a bunch of Neanderthals...
...On the eve of the battle of Chancellorsville —which Douglas Southall Freeman called Jackson's "apotheosis"—he looked out over the troops under his command and remarked on the number who had come from VMI...
...b) turn itself into a private college...
...Smoked by successful people and men of decision from Maine to Monte Carlo...
...And the lawyers, the judges, and the law were merely tools in a fight where the dying and corrupt twentieth century once more imposed its vision, by force, on a community that lived by different values...
...Breyer may not be an eloquent man but you knew where he 38 December 1996 • The American Spectator stood...
...In the courtroom, words mean what the winners say they mean...
...Navy in particular, and the U.S...
...The ocher-colored barracks, with their imposing towers and parapets, are all brick and stucco, harsher than many of the modem structures you would see on actual military reservations these days...
...Military...
...VMI had lived by the spirit of the law for over 15o years...
...The meeting had been scheduled for weeks and it was hard not to conclude that the Justice Department was either sending a message or, simply, could not resist kicking VMI once more while it was down...
...The Shenandoah Valley was just one of many theaters and New Market one among many battles...
...The military insists, officially, that the system works...
...He then marches forward to a large statue where he lays a wreath...
...Tzg,o Send me 7 Cameroon wrapper, H. Upmann Churchills (N06822) For $15.00 + $3.95 shipping...
...City State Zip Daytime Phone # ^ $18.95 Enclosed...
...A state senator from Virginia notified the world that she had "trouble with young men who want to shave their heads and shower together...
...Date OFFER EXPIRES 5197 • OFFER NOT AVAILABLE TO MINORS • OFFER GOOD ONLY IN THE USA 1-800.237-2559 Dept-T266 Fax: 813-882-4605 The American Spectator • December 19 9 6 37 The kind of people who could not abide the war lover in Patton or Puller would inevitably find in Marshall a soldier to admire...
...The Justice Department appealed...
...The judge excused himself, thus depriving the school of an almost certain vote...
...Which anyone could see...
...Bunting had been one of those young men whose gifts are matched by lack of direction...
...They don't know anything and they don't care that they don't know anything...
...When the battalions had come to a halt in line and at attention in front of the staff on the wet grass of the big field, the adjutant gave the command, "Guides post...
...ONE ORDER PER CUSTOMER My Name My Street Address Apt...
...In late August, the new Rats arrived...
...among them, the questions of haircuts, physical-fitness standards, and pregnancy...
...In the not so long ago days of universal military service every VMI graduate was commissioned as an officer in some branch of the U.S...
...A favorite of diplomats, executives, thought leaders and trend setters, it's the ultimate of smoking pleasure and satisfaction...
...Maybe you don't have exactly the same Rat line or the same hazing," he said, if women were admitted to VMI but, "The answer to that is, so what...
...not merely because it would be the end of VMI but of all single-sex education...
...The same kind of people, in other words, who went to battle against VMI in its war with the United States Department of Justice...
...The most celebrated American soldier to have passed through VMI was a graduate and he is not thought of so much as a warrior—not like Patton and Puller, anyway...
...The discussion inevitably came around to the questions of "compelling interests," and you had to think, "Compelling to whom...
...There was nothing about quotas or affirmative action in any Civil Rights Bill, the Equal Rights Amendment did not pass and The American Spectator • December 1996 become part of the Constitution, and the citizens of Virginia never voted on whether or not VMI should remain all-male...
...If he goes to the state university, he'll find the fraternities and the parties and he'll be pulled under...
...Oh," the journalist said and poured more beer...
...And the people who comment on these things found their own visceral distaste for VMI and what it stands for compelling...
...And he managed, if not to make converts, then at least to gain a hearing for VMI from places where it would not have been expected, including a cover story for the New Republic, written by Jeffrey Rosen...
...This is a school for a young man who has average grades and average intelligence and no specific sense of where he wants to go...
...Meanwhile, there was rejoicing among VMI's enemies...
...Excess demerits are marched off...
...He remained at Oxford for three years and took a history degree there...
...George S. Patton, Jr...
...District Court Judge ruled in favor of VMI, saying that while the school may "march to the beat of a different drummer," it served an important state function and did not violate the Constitution...
...One member of the board, according to people who were at the meeting, had to make a phone call for guidance...
...And he'll make it...
...So did Lewis "Chesty" Puller...
...But private baths and showers would be constructed, and shades would be provided for the doors to the rooms in barracks...
...American Spectator Visit The American Spectator online at: http://www.spectatonorg Updated weekly and featuring: •TAS's Enemy of the Week •John Corry's Online Update R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.'s weekly column • Ben Stein's Malibu Sayings • Previous issues of TAS •Subscription information E-mail letters to the editor and subscription inquiries to: amspec@ix.netcom.com 41...
...Finally, though, it all came down to one question: Could the Rat Line survive if women were admitted to VMI...
...The Citadel decided to allow women to have slightly longer hair than men...
...Justice Scalia saw the ruling in typically stark relief...
...In August 1995 Bunting returned to VMI as Superintendent, committed to keeping the school all-male...
...Same haircuts...
...We don't anticipate any changes at all," he said, "with the single exception of changes necessary to accommodate the needs of physical dignity...
...He'll be correct, in this, and that explains why those people give so generously to the endowment...
...So he gave the command, "Send in the boys and may God forgive me...
...Vanity is a form of individuality, and Rats are not permitted to act or think like individuals...
...In one of the many ironies of the case, VMI was being sued because the school received taxpayer funding (some io million, or one-third of VMI's annual operating budget came from state funds) and discriminated against women...
...He went to VMI from the Marines in 1959...
...The vice president of the National Organization for Women said, "VMI is obviously lamenting the downfall of the phallocracy, the rule by the phallus...
...He wants to be something but he needs help...
...There are ten names, in all, from A, B, C, and D companies...
...THOMPSON CIGAR CQ P.O...
...After a VMI faculty member talked, while on vacation, to some midshipmen from the U.S...
...The article was sympathetic and also pessimistic...
...MY INTRODUCTORY OFFER TO NEW CUSTOMERS 7 Upmann Churchills for S 15.00...
...The most forceful of these advocates was easily Josiah Bunting, who may be the most intriguing, complex graduate of the Institute since George C. Marshall...
...Their uniforms are starched cotton or scratchy wool...
...In the end, it was never about co-education or equality or opportunity...
...Private Jefferson...
...There is little free time and no privacy...
...And while the Citadel tried mightily to make the changes without friction, there were difficulties...
...But with the end of the draft and the cold war, that has changed...
...Puller's numerous decorations were donated to the Institute and are on display in the museum in the basement of 36 December 1996 • The American Spectator the chapel, which is called Jackson Memorial Hall...
...And then there was another view...
...No, answered the lawyer for the justice Department, since it would deny women "the opportunity to show they can succeed at VMI...
...Florida residents add 6% sales tax + appropriate county tax...
...There were people who had gone to the school and for whom it was the defining experience of their lives, and their compelling interest was to preserve VMI...
...There were others, supporters who wrote letters to the newspapers and sent checks to the alumni fund...
...It was a measure of just how low schools like VMI had fallen in public esteem that the Corps of Cadets was not invited to march in Bill Clinton's inaugural parade...
...Justice Stephen Breyer seemed to agree with the premise that to admit women was, necessarily, to change the nature of VMI...
...OF COURSE WHAT THEY REALLY WANT IS TO DESTROY THE FABLED SCHOOL ALTOGETHER...
...Because it is based on irrationality...
...Would there have to be changes and, if so, how drastic would they be...
...Where upperclassmen must wear their hair cut short—"high and tight" in the vernacular—a Rat's hair is cut right down to the scalp, in a style called "the Q-ball" that is guaranteed to eradicate any trace of vanity...
...But the fate of VWIL was not the issue...
...The question was how much...
...All cadets wear uniforms...
...I hate 'em all," one cadet said...
...George Bush was president...
...It might have been an obscure skirmish, except for one detail...
...Justice Department promptly warned VMI that it could not contact any federal agency without first notifying the Department in writing...
...You see," Bunting went on, "this school doesn't exist for the kid with 1400 SATs and all sorts of extra-curricular activities and a clear cut sense of his own future...
...The American Spectator December 1996 The endowment grew spectacularly, evidence of how strongly those with the most intimate knowledge of the school and its traditions felt...
...But the fight had its own momentum and logic, and Breckenridge soon had no choice...
...Charge to my ^ VISA ^ MasterCard ^ AmExpress ^ Discover Signed Credit Card No...
...So for VMI, the battle became a kind of sacred and somewhat mysterious event, and its spirit helped first rebuild the school (it was shelled and burned by Federal troops a few weeks after New Market) and then infused it with a kind of unique ardor that still exists and is on display, most conspicuously, on New Market Day...
...Somebody from the Women's Legal Defense Fund was quoted in the Times story as saying she feared that VMI was trying to follow the letter but not the spirit of the law...
...Meanwhile, as the time for a decision drew closer, factions developed on the VMI side...
...This is New Market Day at Virginia Military Institute, the 132nd anniversary of the Battle of New Market which took place 90 miles north of here...
...it ensures that single-sex public education is functionally dead...
...A successful kind of irrationality that no court can understand, because courts are in the business of pushing rationalism...
...But he knows that he has a destiny...
...Rats "strain" in an exaggerated form of the position of attention...
...They are known as the New Market Cadets...
...Asked if he expected more lawsuits challenging VMI's decision, Josiah Bunting said, simply, "I do...
...In defeat, Bunting said women would be treated exactly the way the men at VMI are treated...
...VMI's argument was that the school is by design "a hostile environment," which is enough for the presumption of guilt in a sexual harassment case...
...Almost a year later, VMI and the state of Virginia announced a plan to create something called the Virginia Women's Institute for Leadership (VWIL) at Mary Baldwin College...
...The answer, VMI supporters said, is simple...
...Twenty years later, when he comes back to a reunion, he'll be president of his own construction company...
...But the meaning is not in the words...
...Four years later, after graduating as regimental commander, he went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar...
...Either the alumni were people (men) of average good will who had strong feelings for a place they knew well, and they believed that bringing women into the traditionally all-male environment would do damage to the school...
...called are buried...
...VMI has the largest per-capita endowment of any "public" college, some $185 million...
...They are reported to the regimental commander as absent, having "died on the field of honor...
...Deval Patrick promised to "work with school officials to insure that women are successfully integrated into VMI...
...The life of a Rat—like VMI life in general —is not for everyone...
...George C. Marshall oversaw the creation of the military colossus that carried the United States to victory in World War II...
...Less than two weeks before that meeting, the Justice Department filed an "emergency motion," charging that VMI was 40 December 1996 The American Spectator conducting "business as usual...
...They wore white pants, gray coatees with crossed dykes, and shakos...
...The guides took their posts...
...Ruth 39 The most forceful of these advocates was Josiah Bunting, the most intriguing, complex graduate of the Institute since Marshall...
...ROTC is offered at several of them...
...A statue of Jackson stands in front of the entrance to the barracks at VMI, and Rats must salute the stone warrior whenever they come through Jackson arch...
...The time for the men was 15 minutes and 54 seconds...
...The endowment grew spectacularly during the court case, which is evidence of how strongly the people with the most intimate knowledge of the school and its traditions felt about going co-educational...
...TEMPSON linen if's Oldest Alai...
...Women would wear uniforms and march and do some physical training (aerobics and rock climbing), but they would not be screamed at and made to do push-ups and suffer the other stresses and indignities of the VMI "Rat Line...
...The U.S...
...They had fought against outsiders for a long time and now, some reported sadly, they were fighting among themselves...
...Sexual harassment had become a national issue, if not a national obsession, during the hearings to confirm Clarence Thomas's appointment to the Supreme Court...
...THE SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS H. UPMANN CHURCHILL Savor for yourself the sublime smoking experience of the 51/2" x 46 ring H. Upmann Churchill...
...They held their ground under heavy shelling and then charged a strong Union artillery position taking nearly 3o percent casualties—including the io dead—in a force of some 25o...
...The men who go here, and have gone here, love this place profoundly...
...And, even if the school did go private, which one judge had ruled was a permissible option, its problems with the federal government would almost certainly not be over...
...To VMI supporters, however, the physical stresses were less the issue than the psychological pressures of the Rat line, which come down to simple harassment...
...It was ungallant, at the least...
...The Justice Department, of course,did not have to worry about money...
...They must be able to recite all sorts of arcane information from memory and upon demand...
...Schools that teach the great books and schools that teach comic books...
...They march to meals,stand guard duty in the courtyard, keep their rooms inspection ready, and receive demerits for infractions of the rules...
...Those people will do all right and there are lots of places for them...
...There is no reason to believe that the admission of women capable of the activities required of VMI cadets would destroy the institute rather than enhance its capacity to serve "the more perfect Union...
...The Institute will be heard from today," Jackson said...
...Some of the boys were hit, but the cadets were firm...
...It was put in the cadets or lose the battle...
...A Rat must walk an imaginary straight line in barracks, double-time up the stairs, sit on the leading six inches of his chair at meals, and endure ritualized abuse from upperclassmen that can take all sorts of creative forms...
...Sandra Day O'Connor asked if an equivalent program for women that was "just as tough, just as mean" as the one at VMI would satisfy the requirements of the Constitution...
...CiyurCnntpeny...
...battle, as a unit, and actually defeating an enemy...
...Order 1943, Thompson & Co., Inc...
...A few months later, Jackson rode off to war and a remarkable string of victories just down the Valley from VMI in battles that are still studied by military men all over the world...
...They understand that if women are admitted, then it will change and change irretrievably...
...military in general, were put on the defensive over the issues of sexual harassment and gender equality...
...The point is to humiliate and antagonize and break down the will of the Rat...
...There are schools that were founded by Quakers, Catholics, Mormons, and Baptists...
...So he gave the command, "Send in the boys and may God forgive me...
...Might as well go with the letter for a while...
...Perhaps they were infected with a kind of romanticism born out of experience...
...a feeling for lost causes...
...I could raise the money in ten phone calls," Bunting said in a rare moment of pugnacity...
...CAA 0 BY GEOFFREY NORMAN It rained in Lexington, Virginia on the morning of May 15, 1996, and right up until the last minute, there was talk of canceling the parade...
...Stonewall Jackson, the eccentric Confederate genius, graduated from West Point but, after the Mexican War, joined the staff of VMI where he taught natural and experimental philosophy, which is another way of saying "physics," and also artillery tactics...
...Same physical standards...
...The ability to make distinctions in these matters has atrophied entirely, if it ever existed...
...The rest never serve a single day of active duty...
...They knew you couldn't beat the Federals when they were on the march...
...Union troops, after all, came back up the Valley not long after the battle of New Market while, in other theaters, Sherman and Grant were squeezing the life from the Confederacy...
...Nothing like that had ever occurred—schoolboys marching into 34 December 199 6 The American Spectator SKIS 6 The American Spectator • December 1996 35 ASOISIO A Ca Breckenridge had no choice...
...The program would not be a carbon-copy of VMI's "adversative approach" but would, instead, stress "positive reinforcement...
...The adjutant then called for the report...
...There are several ways of measuring this success...
...As the court weighed the arguments on its way to reaching a decision, speculation rose not merely about what the mling would be but also about VMI's reaction...
...He also served in the 82nd Airborne and on the faculty at West Point, where he was still on active duty, in 1972, when his novel The Lionheads was published to very good reviews...
...The statue is called "Virginia Mourning Her Dead," and just behind it are plain stones marking the graves where six of the ten men whose names have just been GEOFFREY NORMAN is editor at large for Forbes FYI...
...Lawsuits are expensive...
...The regimental commander acknowledges this report by saluting with his saber...
...The school would keep its antique-looking uniforms and there would still be marching and drums...
...Still, four years at VMI is as much a military as an educational experience...
...But the existence of a 1,3oo-man school, one of four all-male schools in the entire nation, was being compared, with a straight face, to schooling under Jim Crow...
...VMI supporters cited Ruth Bader Ginsberg's own language: "Women seeking and fit for a VMI quality education cannot be offered anything less...
...They live in spar-tan barracks, as many as five to a room, with doors that do not lock and wooden furniture built by prison labor...
...For the men, it would be forty-two...
...In those words, there was hope that, if the school did go coed, the changes would be limited...
...Before the first women had arrived at VMI, its enemies were finding the school in defiance...
...They were boys, some barely in their teens, and General Breckenridge, the Southern commander, did not intend to put them in the line...
...But some took even more solace from the language of the woman they called Darth Bader: Women seeking and fit for a VMI-quality education cannot be offered anything less, under the state's obligation to afford them genuinely equal protection...
...She was gone in a week and Citadel cadets were photographed cheering the news...
...He was gung-ho enough to get the big tattoo, conspicuously, on his forearm...
...The battle of New Market had virtually no influence on the outcome of the war, other than to add to its lamentable casualty rolls and its long list of legends...
...It was plain that the government would play that kind of hardball...
...or (d) find some other solution...
...But there was honor in standing up to them...
...The law schools defeated the military schools...
...Bader Ginsberg wrote the majority decision, and Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote a separate concurrence...
Vol. 29 • December 1996 • No. 12
