Virginia Military Institute opened its barracks and parade grounds to women Saturday, retreating from 157 years of male-only tradition as the price of keeping its public funds.
The decision came nearly three months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that VMI's exclusion of women was unconstitutional.While The Citadel in South Carolina decided in just two days to go along with the decision - and has four female cadets this year - VMI had put off acting while it weighed the possibility of going private to preserve its traditions and discipline.
After four days of debate, the VMI board voted 9-8 Saturday to admit women by the fall of 1997.
Gov. George Allen and state legislators had urged VMI to go along with the Supreme Court's ruling. Many alumni strongly opposed allowing women into the school in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
"It's a sad day for VMI. It's a sad day for the state, and it's a sad day for the nation as far as I'm concerned," said Robert Patterson, a 1943 graduate and lead attorney for the effort to exclude women.
Senior cadet Brian Bagwan, 22, said there would be "no fundamental change. VMI is a lot more than having or not having women."
But Jabari Craddock, a 19-year-old junior, said many cadets were saddened to see the tradition end.
"One day when I start a family, and my son comes to me and says, `Hey pops, I want to attend an all-male military institute like you did,' I'll say, `Son, I'm sorry, there are no more of them left.' "
If VMI had decided to go private rather than admit women on equal footing with men, the school would have had to raise a minimum endowment of $200 million to generate the $10 million in annual operating funds now supplied by the state, according to VMI Superintendent Josiah Bunting III.
The alumni also might have had to buy the campus, valued at $137 million.
VMI Board President William Berry said that the panel voted its head over its heart. "There is no question the sentiment of the board - 100 percent is that we would prefer for VMI to remain all-male and state-supported."
Board member Anita Blair, who voted against coeducation and wore a button that read "Go Private," said the school now stands to lose its "distinctive, attractive, educational niche."
At the heart of that uniqueness is VMI's method of training young men under harsh, demanding conditions.
First-year cadets live in Spartan barracks that offer little privacy. They rise before the sun, observe rigid timetables and march single-file everywhere they go on campus.
They are also exposed to the "rat line," comparable in intensity to Marine boot camp, in which they are tormented by older cadets.
The only changes VMI will make to the barracks will be to protect "basic human physical decency," such as building separate showers for women and putting curtains on the windows.
"Female cadets will be treated precisely as we treat male cadets," Bunting said. Otherwise, "fully qualified women would themselves feel demeaned."
And he added that he wasn't too concerned about the possibility that male and female cadets would start dating.
"Rats don't have time to date anybody," Bunting said.
VMI has been fighting to stay all-male since January 1990, when the Justice Department first threatened to sue on behalf of female would-be cadets - more than three years before Shannon Faulkner filed her lawsuit to get into The Citadel.
VMI attempted to get around earlier court orders to admit women by offering a military-style leadership program at Mary Baldwin College, a private women's school in nearby Staunton. U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser approved that idea, but the Justice Department attacked the program as being as unequal and unconstitutional as racial segregation.