THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, June 29, 1996 TAG: 9606290001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A11 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: Kerry Dougherty
LENGTH: 76 lines
My husband and I sometimes debate the merits of large universities over small liberal arts colleges. He went to the University of Virginia and thinks big is good. I went to a liberal arts college in Pennsylvania and prefer small.
When we talk about where we hope our children will go to college, my husband is adamant that they are destined for Charlottesville. I, on the other hand, remind him that a large university is not right for everyone.
Choice is key.
Some college students thrive in a large university. Others, in small colleges. Some will do better if they live at home and commute, others if they live out of state.
Many crave the coed experience. Others will flourish in a single-sex setting.
Unfortunately, the latter is one option that may not be around in 10 years or so. Single-sex education is on the decline in America. There are just 86 single-sex colleges left. Eighty one of those are women's colleges. The arithmatic says that means only five are all-male.
Make that three. The U.S. Supreme Court decision this week ordering VMI to either admit women or stop taking state money effectively knocks two of those all-male schools off the map: VMI and The Citadel.
That isn't a lot of choice for boys who are looking for a single-sex college.
Yet, as a woman who believes strongly in equal rights, my first gut reaction when I heard of the court decision was to be pleased.
I couldn't help remembering my own high-school years in New Jersey. Every day I'd watch the mail for college catalogues. Later I'd spend hours poring over the glossy publications with their enticing sales pitches and color pictures.
But there was one college catalogue I never even sent for, even though it was the best public university in the state: Rutgers. The university has since gone coed, but it was all-male then. Out of reach.
Rutgers had made an accomodation for women then - Douglass College for Women - a school so small that gaining admission was more competitive than at any of the famed Seven Sisters. I never got closer to Douglass than a quick tour and a long waiting list.
I remember becoming passionate, the way only an 18-year-old can, about the maddening fact that the best public college in the state, where my parents' hard-earned tax dollars had been flowing for many years, would not even consider the likes of me.
It was especially irksome when male classmates with lower SAT scores and triple-digit class ranks, arrogantly waved their acceptance letters from Rutgers.
So when I learned this week that VMI - a single-sex state school - would soon be coed I felt my frustration with Rutgers had finally been avenged. The highest court in the land confirmed what I knew a quarter century ago: that using tax dollars for single-sex schools wasn't fair.
But as a traditionalist; as someone who prefers letters to phone calls, books to television and typewriters to computers, I felt saddened at the same time that society had taken another giant lockstep toward homogeneity.
It's not really hard to understand what it is about VMI that turns its alumni into snarling dogs when confronted with the prospect of female coeds and has cadets seething over the indignity of women in their midst. In a word, tradition.
The school, like our state, is steeped in tradition, and women have never been a part of VMI's.
For the cadets who are already there, the arrival of women will spoil something they came to Lexington to find: single-sex education.
For the men who have graduated, the women will mar their memories.
And so, like many Virginians, I take no real pleasure in watching what the Supreme Court has done to VMI. Sure, my daughter will have the option of attending VMI someday if she chooses. And, yes, I think the court did the right thing.
But if my son wants a single-sex education there will be no more than three schools for him to chose from.
That's really no choice at all. MEMO: Ms. Dougherty is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot. by CNB