DATE: Tuesday, September 2, 1997            TAG: 9709020136

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A6   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Briefs 

                                            LENGTH:   24 lines

3RD WOMAN EXITS VMI, ALONG WITH 28 1ST-YEAR MALES

LEXINGTON - Another woman has dropped out of the first coed class at the Virginia Military Institute, officials said Monday.

Spokesman Mike Strickler said that as of Monday, three female and 28 male first-year students have left the Lexington school and its rat line, a six-month tribulation VMI uses to test the physical, mental and emotional limits of all first-year students, or rats.

Strickler declined to identify the latest woman to drop out, but said it wasn't a woman who complained last week about cadets singling her out for unfair treatment.

VMI chose to go coed after a 1996 Supreme Court ruling that the school could not be both state-supported and all-male. KEYWORDS: VMI

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