DATE: Monday, May 19, 1997                  TAG: 9705190080

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A6   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: CHARLESTON, S.C.                  LENGTH:   42 lines

CITADEL TO REVEAL PLAN FOR ADMITTING WOMEN TODAY A JUDGE WILL REVIEW THE SCHOOL'S PAST EFFORTS AND ITS GOALS FOR FUTURE.

The Citadel will present its updated plan for bringing in female cadets in federal district court today.

The school said Sunday that 79 issues are addressed in the plan, 26 of which have been added during the first full year women attended The Citadel's formerly all-male Corps of Cadets.

Four women entered The Citadel in August, but Kim Messer and Jeanie Mentavlos did not return for the second semester amid allegations of hazing and harassment. There were 15 cadets disciplined by school officials.

The Citadel had asked a school committee to study women's admission and how the school handled it. The panel, headed by former Citadel president James A. Grimsley Jr., asked for an administrator to monitor progress of the women's assimilation, sensitivity training for male cadets and hiring an female officers for certain positions.

Citadel officials held sensitivity training for its 1,700 cadets last month and said it would add a female assistant commandant.

Several of the changes were among recommendations contained in two reviews after the hazing incidents - Grimsley's committee and one by a consultant appointed by U.S. District Judge C. Weston Houck.

Today, Houck begins reviewing the school's past efforts to bring in women and its plan for admitting more in the fall.

Attorneys for the U.S. Justice Department had complained the plan still isn't finalized and want the judge to order the school to lay out all the details.

The judge and government are being asked to ``review at the eleventh hour of whatever skeletal outlines of a plan the defendants submit, propose only minor alterations because there is insufficient time to do more and hope for the best,'' attorneys say in court documents.

Citadel interim president Clifton Poole says the plan is the next step for the school on admitting women smoothly.

``We have done the best we could do under the circumstances, and we have learned from our experiences,'' he said.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu