THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, September 24, 1996 TAG: 9609240328
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: ROANOKE LENGTH: 62 lines
Sheared heads and physical tests more rigorous than those at U.S. military academies would create a hostile attitude for female cadets at Virginia Military Institute, a women's advocate said Monday.
``They're poor losers,'' said Karen Johnson, vice president of the National Organization for Women and a retired Air Force colonel.
The Justice Department, which successfully sued VMI to force the state-owned school to accept women, declined to comment Monday on VMI's decision Saturday to admit women but subject them to the same harsh regimen as men.
VMI spokesman Mike Strickler called Johnson's criticism unwarranted.
He said U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, while finding it improper to exclude women from a state-supported college, also wrote that ``some women are capable of all of the individual activities required of VMI cadets.''
``There are some women who can do it and they would want nothing less than the VMI experience,'' Strickler said.
U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser, who sided with VMI throughout the six-year court fight, now will oversee the college's compliance with the Supreme Court order. A hearing has not been scheduled.
The Citadel, the only other public military college, agreed to admit women two days after the Supreme Court ruling and filed a 21-page coeducation plan with the federal court in Charleston, S.C.
Superintendent Josiah Bunting said VMI will ask Kiser to let the school implement a coeducation plan without submitting it to the court.
Justice Department spokeswoman Lee Douglass said the department would not comment on any of VMI's proposals until it has had a chance to review them.
But NOW and the American Civil Liberties Union said VMI cannot be trusted to properly integrate women and needs to be closely monitored by the federal government. Both organizations had filed legal briefs supporting coeducation.
``True equality means making some allowances that recognize the differences in the sexes,'' said Kent Willis, director of the ACLU in Virginia. ``This appears to be a kind of malicious compliance.''
VMI wants female cadets to wear the same stubbly ``buzz cuts'' as men.
Johnson said it is more of an emotional burden for women to walk around nearly bald than it is for men because they are viewed by society as less feminine.
``The haircut is just a way of being vindictive,'' she said. ``In Nazi Germany, they shaved the heads of female prisoners to shame them.''
VMI also wants women to perform five pull-ups, 60 situps in two minutes and run 1 1/2 miles in 12 minutes, just as men do.
``It would be demeaning to women to cut them slack in the physical requirements,'' Bunting said.
The Citadel adopted guidelines used at the U.S. military academies and let the four women who enrolled this fall keep some of their hair and meet slightly less rigorous physical tests.
``The experience at the military academies has shown women have not been demeaned by different standards,'' Johnson of NOW said. ``They (VMI administrators) are trying to out-macho the military academies, and that's ridiculous.''
The military academies and The Citadel require females to do 18 push-ups in two minutes while the males do 42, do 50 situps in two minutes while the males do 52 and run two miles in 18 minutes, 54 seconds while men do it in 15:54. by CNB