Sex segregation and the war between the states
Epstein, Cynthia Fuchs
For many alumni of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) and the Citadel, the last two statesupported schools that hoped to continue their pattern of discrimination against women, the Civil War...
...The decision would also, he predicted, be the end of single-sex education (another sensitive debate among feminist and conservative educators today...
...As Susan Faludi reported in the New Yorker, locker room talk at these schools characterizes women as whores and sluts...
...Indeed, the schools posed the issue in terms of states' rights, of the war between the North and the South, and then used the language of the left to argue that they were offering programs to guarantee "diversity" and to benefit disadvantaged boys and girls (in their separate institutions...
...These two military-style institutions, which give their sons handsome educations in engineering, the sciences, and liberal arts and a lifetime "oldboy" network of contacts, now have to admit women—and thus expose themselves to the "virus" women will bring, as one administrator at VMI put it...
...It was clearly the principle of the thing...
...The war between the states and the war between the sexes are no longer "hot...
...But in a seven-to-one decision handed down by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who as a lawyer had argued pivotal sex discrimation cases before the Court), the lower court ruling was overturned...
...I had the opportunity to visit the Citadel and Converse College in preparation for my testimony as an expert witness for the plaintiff (I refuted the spurious "social science" evidence offered by the school that women required education based on different "methodologies" than men because of their presumed cognitive and psychological differences...
...Many wars were fought on the battlefields of these two cases...
...Alumni and administrators at both institutions did not appreciate the "northern" lawyers who came down from the Justice Department (in an action that was actually started during the Bush administration...
...And surprisingly, at the Citadel, so fiercely antagonistic to women, there was a real female presence—women faculty and day students (though not in the Corps of Cadets...
...Of course, there is the whole question of why, in this day and age, the notion that women will pollute the environment and undermine the opportunity to become "real men" still generates the kind of passions that made male students isolate and ridicule Shannon Faulkner (the lone woman who attempted to join the Citidel's Corps of Cadets under a court order) so badly that she withdrew from the school after a week...
...For example, VMI's expert witnesses argued that women were physically weaker and could not take stress as well as men, and that more than a hundred physiological differences contribute to a "natural hierarchy" in which women cannot compete with men...
...At Converse, cordially escorted to classes and dormitories (but introduced as "the enemy") I found few computers, a dismal library, and low tech labs...
...The Citadel announced that it would now welcome women "enthusiastically" because it has always obeyed the law, and has admitted four women...
...The fact that the federal service academies—West Point, Annapolis, and the Air Force Academy—have admitted women since 1976 was, not taken into account in the lower court's ruling, which permitted segregated programs...
...Justice Antonin Scalia, the one voice of dissent in the 12 • DISSENT Comments and Opinions Supreme Court (Justice Clarence Thomas recused himself from this case because his son is a student at VMI), decried the move from tradition ("the history of our people...
...But battles are still to be fought between those who would like to reinstitute sex segregation and those who understand the insidious consequences that would follow...
...FAIL • 1996 • 13...
...He argued that the court was making law, not interpreting it, by narrowing the standard of "intermediate scrutiny" (applied to cases of gender discrimination and considerably more lax than the "strict scrutiny" standard applied to cases of racial discrimination...
...The traditions referred to by Scalia, honored at both schools, are to produce officers and gentlemen...
...Their traditions, which range from close haircuts to abuse that would not pass scrutiny by Amnesty International, are a questionable educational benefit...
...Ginsburg noted that VMI's separate but "comparable" program at the all-female Mary Baldwin College was far inferior to VMI's own program in every way, including its absence of tradition and prestige...
...VMI dragged its heels, but faced with losing lavish state aid and having to buy the grounds and buildings from the state, it agreed to admit women in 1997...
...The suit by the Department of Justice against VMI was heard by the Supreme Court (litigation against the Citadel was deferred pending the decision on VMI) and VMI was found to be in violation of the Constitution's equal protection guarantee...
...And as for being gentlemen . . . . As a visiting woman educator from the North I found it pleasant to encounter the polished manners (many "Yes, ma'ams") of administrators and students, but since then I have heard about their misogynistic attitudes...
...Only about 15 percent of their graduates join the military...
...United in their fight to exclude women at first, the Citadel appeared to be the good sport and VMI the sore loser after the battle...
...Both schools fought hard, and their alumni came up with millions of dollars to keep their barracks (if not their campuses) free of women...
...At the Citadel, I saw lavish laboratories for computer science and engineering and a fabulous gym...
...For many alumni of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) and the Citadel, the last two statesupported schools that hoped to continue their pattern of discrimination against women, the Civil War has been lost again...
...This ruling also affected the Citadel, which had also instituted a "comparable" "leadership" program for women at Converse College, one that offered ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps), but hardly any of the other opportunities that the Citadel offers to men...
...Debates on "difference" and "similarity" between the sexes brought forth arguments long familiar in feminist and popular literature...
Vol. 43 • September 1996 • No. 4
