Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 16, 1995                   TAG: 9508160063
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THE CITADEL

The ups: On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court refused an emergency request from the school to keep her out, clearing the way for her to become the first woman in the cadet corps at The Citadel. On Monday morning, she learned she'd passed her audition for the corps band, and began undergoing "hell week" with 590 other incoming cadets.

The down: On Monday afternoon, the 20-year-old fell ill - as did four male classmates - in the 100-degree heat of Charleston, S.C. She remained in the infirmary Tuesday, and was expected to stay there at least until today.

The nation's other state-owned military school for men, Virginia Military Institute, has so far dodged the coeducation bullet by claiming a new "substantively comparable" leadership program at private, all-women Mary Baldwin College as equal-protection protection. The Citadel wants to do the same with a proposed leadership program at private, all-women Converse College.

But the Mary Baldwin program will go into effect this fall, while the Converse plan is only in the preliminary stages - not far enough along, a federal appeals courts ruled, to justify denying Faulkner her place in the Citadel corps.

When Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier nearly half a century ago, the weight of an entire race was on his shoulders. He couldn't be a mediocre player, or even just a good one. For the barrier to stay down, Robinson had to be a superplayer; he was a pioneer challenging the prevailing racial prejudices of the day.

Faulkner doesn't bear such a burden. However she fares individually, the capacity for women to lead - including in the classroom and on the drillfield - is firmly established. The national military academies have long been coed. It's less Faulkner who's challenging convention than it is VMI and The Citadel that are proudly out of step with the contemporary world.