ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, February 2, 1996 TAG: 9602020024
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
You might expect the chief spokesman for Virginia Military Institute to roll his eyes at the thought of reporters - maybe even scowl. Just since August, he has given interviews to and otherwise helped 88 commercial media outlets covering the legal challenge to VMI's male-only status.
But Mike Strickler still likes reporters. Though their numbers on the Lexington campus at times have risen to 100 a day, nobody in the press climbed a fence, stole a document or twisted his words. Strickler said media representatives were well behaved, reported the news fairly and were easy to work with.
"It's one of the most important and enjoyable parts of my jobs," Strickler told the Blue Ridge chapter of the Public Relations Society of America on Thursday in Roanoke.
"I didn't say it's not hectic. And, of course, my wife loves the weekend and late night calls at home."
Strickler, 46, a 1971 VMI graduate, became VMI's front man in 1991, about two years after the Justice Department began pressuring the college to admit women. Ongoing developments catapulted VMI into the news many times, but Strickler most vividly recalls the "hell day" that began about noon on May 24, 1993. Hours earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had refused to resolve the admissions policy dispute, a decision it later reversed.
Faculty, staff and students were on vacation, the press swarmed the campus, and "I was the only game in town," Strickler said. "I felt like a pingpong ball, going between 5 and 6 o'clock from one interview to the next."
In his office later, he said, he returned about 50 phone calls.
Around the start of classes last August, the most intense coverage of all followed Shannon Faulkner's decision to leave The Citadel after struggling to become its first woman cadet. VMI admitted 20 media outlets inside barracks, where they filmed the brutish caste system that molds newcomers into VMI men.
VMI officials, Strickler said, "have nothing to hide. This is the way the VMI system operates; let's let them see it. And the media received a firsthand account, and I think it definitely opened their eyes to what we do and the way we do it."
Yet another round of media calls and campus visits coincided with a Jan. 17 session of the U.S. Supreme Court at which both sides argued the case, which will be decided by late spring.
Strickler named some of the outlets that chased the story and sent it around the world: "AP, NPR, CBS, NBC, CNN, C-Span, etc., and I almost forgot, Polish National Broadcasting. That's no joke. They came down from Washington and did a story which aired to 17 million viewers in Poland."
LENGTH: Medium: 52 linesby CNB