The Citadel should be ashamed of itself. Instead, the cadets at the state military school in South Carolina are proud. Proud that Shannon Faulkner is no longer among them. Proud that harassment, vandalism and discrimination have triumphed over simple justice. Proud that the wishes of 2,000 young men for continued exclusivity have won out over the ability of one young woman to endure the heat, humidity, social isolation and other rigors of the school's "hell week" plus more than two years of death threats and intense national scrutiny.
Some victory for a "proud" tradition of military education. Some demonstration of male "superiority."What has been proved by her physical collapse and subsequent withdrawal from the school to which she long sought admittance? That the training at The Citadel is rigorous? Of course it is. But too rigorous for women? More rigorous than the basic training routinely mastered by the many thousands of women in the regular armed services? Don't be absurd.
Though The Citadel may have heard the last of Shannon Faulkner, it has not heard the last of the campaign to open its doors to other women. The school has had some 200 requests for applications from women since Faulkner began her legal fight in 1993 to become The Citadel's first woman cadet. Many of them are just as determined as she was - and will have just as many courts behind them as she did.
The Citadel, however, just doesn't get the message. Neither does South Carolina. Incredibly, the state is pressing a plan to create - notice this unhappy phrase - a "separate but equal" military program for women at some other college.
Incredible! Forty years ago the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that separate but supposedly equal schools are unconstitutional for blacks and other racial minorities. With that historic precedent before it, how could the high court justify separate public military schools for women without making itself a laughingstock by going through some extremely strange ideological contortions?
This whole case involving Shannon Faulkner and The Citadel is not about just one woman or even about the entire gender. Rather, it's about simple justice - a concept that seems to be beyond the immature young men enrolled at The Citadel and their many adult supporters.
The basic principle involved is that public schools supported by funds from all the taxpayers must admit all qualified children of those taxpayers regardless of their race or gender.
The choice facing The Citadel is simple: Either reject tax funds and switch from a public to a private institution. Or get its head out of the sand, obey the law, and enter the 20th century.