ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Sunday, September 29, 1996             TAG: 9609300067
SECTION: VIRGINIA                 PAGE: A-1  EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: LEXINGTON
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Above

AT VMI, AN ERA ENDS ... AND BEGINSTHIS YEAR'S "RAT MASS," THE CLASS OF 2000, WILL BE MARKED AS A CLASS OF FIRSTS - AND LASTS

For the 390 young men who marched into the Virginia Military Institute's new barracks Aug. 21, it was a momentous occasion. Wearing matching white T-shirts and red gym shorts, the rats - as freshmen at VMI are called - clapped in unison and cheered each other.

It was an attempt to steel themselves against the coming onslaught: six days of endless running, marching, push-ups, and lots and lots of screaming. It's called Cadre Week - or, more colloquially, Hell Week.

It's the kind of experience that can change an 18-year-old boy's life.

But on Sept. 21, exactly one month after Hell Week started, this year's rat rite of passage took on added significance.

The VMI Board of Visitors voted to make the school coed after six years of litigation and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that an all-male admissions policy at a public school was unconstitutional.

Waiting for Hell Week to erupt, the cadets of the class of 2000 didn't know it, but they were to become the last all-male "Rat Mass" at VMI.

Today's Extra section features the first in an occasional series that will document the perspiration and perseverance, the demands and the dilemmas of the last class that will graduate from VMI in this millennium - and probably the last to graduate without women. 

LENGTH: Short :   43 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  CINDY PINKSTON/Staff. 1. Paul Staton (front) 2. and 

          brother VMI rats march in the weekly Friday afternoon parade on the 

          VMI campus in Lexington (above). This weekend was VMI's Homecoming 

          and Alumni Weekend. 3. Allen Williams (left, in right photo) 

          instructs rat Christopher Cornelli on the proper rifle position. The

          VMI Board of Visitors recently voted to make the school coed after 

          six years of litigation and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. color.
by CNB