THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 8, 1994 TAG: 9408080041
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines
Of course, Shannon Faulkner has, thus far, the right to go to The Citadel. And it has the right to treat her as it does any other cadet and shave her head as a new recruit.
If it chooses to be so stupid.
If it does give her a knob haircut, the picture of shorn Shannon will appear the next day on the front page of every newspaper in the United States and on TV.
Talk shows will talk of little else.
Overnight, she will become a heroine inspiring other young women to storm The Citadel's gates.
In shearing her, The Citadel, producer of governors and 40 percent of South Carolina's CEOs, will appear an anachronistic institution, lacking compassion, common sense and the vision to change to meet the needs of the modern military.
And The Citadel will have violated its own grandest tradition and that of other service academies.
Implicit in their image is a chivalric mission to defend the weak, especially womankind. Their medieval towers are redolent of knights riding to the rescue of maidens fair.
Each knight might beseech a lock of his beloved's hair but not the entire scalp. They put women on a pedestal, not in a barber's chair.
To exclude women is to ignore the demands of the Army, Navy and Air Force, which are rapidly expanding women's roles in national defense.
Why, the modern-day Citadel alumnus may expect to find himself working beside those mysterious creatures and even have to take orders from one the likes of which bore him into this world.
Many a Citadel graduate, intent on a military career, is likely to leave the school's monastic surroundings with a blind spot about women's abilities.
Moreover, he will have been deprived on the campus of women's keen intellect, which in most respects is superior to that of men.
That was evident after the admission of women to universities where many male students had scoffed at the notion of women in their midst.
But professors found that the presence of women lent a lift to discourse in formerly all-male classes.
The contention that women don't have the stuff to endure discipline at The Citadel overlooks their fortitude in undergoing, without fanfare, the much harsher strain of bearing children.
The revealing novel ``Lords of Discipline'' by alumnus Pat Conroy suggests that the enlightening influence of women will enhance, not impair, the way of life at The Citadel.
And at Virginia Military Institute. At VMI's behest, Mary Baldwin is setting up a comparable program, the Virginia Women's Institute for Leadership, with probably some ROTC at VMI. If courts decree on a women's barracks on campus, that step may be easier for VMI.
The two great institutions are sand castles on the shore and the tides are inching closer evermore. by CNB