G.I. Jane at VMI: Charmaine and Jack Yoest explain why female "Brother Rats" may have a rough time at the nation's oldest military college. A harbinger of things to come? - Virginia Military Institute

Women's Quarterly, Autumn, 2001 by Jack Yoest

AFTER SPENDING $10 million to ready the campus for a siege by women, the Virginia Military Institute, the oldest military college in the U.S., in August 1997 reluctantly accepted its first female "Brother Rat." Last May, in a much-publicized ceremony, a bevy of thirteen female cadets received their diplomas, tossing their gloves toward the high ceilings of VMI's Cameron Hall, joining the ranks of the "citizen-soldiers," the brotherhood, that the famous college has been turning out since 1839.

Still, the year had been, in some respects, a decidedly rocky one for the school General George C. Marshall attended. There had been a first of some considerable notoriety: VMI's first pregnant cadet. She opted to remain in the barracks through her second trimester.

Other female cadets apparently had no such desire to linger. The usual graduation euphoria had a particular edge--one of the female graduates, Cadet Maria Vasile, was not nostalgic; she told a reporter for the Associated Press, "I just want to get out of here." Similarly, Cadet Kelly K. Sullivan, though effusive in her praise for VMI discipline, hoped her next bivouac would be cushier. Sullivan noted to a reporter covering the graduation ceremony that at VMI there is "a lot of stuff you have to deal with that you won't have to deal with in the civilian world."

Of course some of the "stuff you have to deal with" at VMI is rooted in its famous "adversative" system of military discipline, which is intended to build unit cohesion as combat preparation. A poignant reminder of this mission sits at the center of campus: A statue of one of VMI's most famous professors, General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, is inscribed with his famous words, "The Institute will be heard from today." Surrounded by his former VMI students and colleagues, Jackson uttered these words as together they prepared for battle at Chancellorsville. A few hours later he received the wounds from which he later died.

Over a century later, in 1996, Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, advised VMI's board and Alumni Association what "stuff" to expect if the school went coed: sexual harassment, pregnancy, and litigation. The Supreme Court had just ruled in U.S. v. Virginia that the Constitution's equal protection clause prohibited VMI's 157-year-old men-only tradition. The board faced a choice: Throw open its barracks to women, or renounce its public funding.

The remarks of female cadets to reporters at graduation ceremonies afforded rare, on-the-record acknowledgments of the problems VMI and its women have confronted over the last five years. Donnelly's list now reads like prophecy: gender concerns with physical training, privacy issues, sensitivity training, sexual relationships, and redefinition of "success." In the second year of coed VMI, the young man who had just been selected to assume the corps' highest leadership position, Jerry Webb, was expelled after using his position of authority to coerce sexual favors from female cadets.

After this year's historic pregnancy, VMI instituted a gender-neutral policy that requires the expulsion of all cadets who become parents. This means VMI's attorneys should start preparing for their next Supreme Court appearance.

VMI is proud of, and emphatic about, its refusal to alter its monthly fitness test. However, although the score affects a student's grade point average, cadets are not required to pass it. And with the arrival of women, Leadership in the elite Cadre of the Corps is now no longer prohibited to those who fail the test. While there are some women who are able to do well on the test--many of these women are varsity athletes--the fact remains that passing the test represents a higher, if nor insurmountable, hurdle for the women than it does for the men. And for most, it requires far more Saturday nights on the Nautilus machine.

Still, the new regime has adamant supporters. One mother of a young man graduating in the Class of 2001 opined to the Washington Post that, after having attended a coed VMI, her son was going to be "a better husband and father because he knows how to treat women."

Before the arrival of women, the mission of VMI was to prepare men for leadership to fight and win America's wars. But learning how to treat women is indeed at the top of VMI's pedagogical agenda these days. The VMI management team, under the watchful eye of the United States Justice Department, has attempted to create a nurturing environment where women are humiliated and harangued in an androgynous way equal to their male peers, without, well, actually harassing them.

To that end, cadets are required to attend "focus groups" where they ponder the ontological essence of defining a "date." Students are lectured on newly developed anti-hazing and sexual harassment regulations: They may not date anyone in their chain of command. "Hooking-up" with another cadet is generally handled under "don't ask, don't tell" as long as it's not in the barracks. But there is to be no touching any other cadet, of any gender, without first gently inquiring, "May I touch you?" Assault and battery is permissible only between consenting adults.