BREAKING OUT: VMI and the Coming of Women. - Review - book review

Washington Monthly, Sept, 2000 by Liza Mundy

"I'm looking around the room here, and there's a Marine combat veteran, there are two Army combat veterans, a couple of unit commanders, a Green Beret, all these he-man killer people sitting around considering whether we dry undies one way or another way."

One thing I have always liked about VMI is the sense of humor of its graduates, and Brodie does a good job of bringing this out. She also evokes some memorable images that go far beyond the routine coverage: a male cadet recalling how impressed he was when he went to wake two female rats for early morning physical training, only to discover that "they were already awake, with their hays [mattresses] rolled, and their racks [bedframes] up, and they were sleeping with their heads on their desks, ready to go out to PT ... I'd never seen that. But they knew what they were getting into, so they were ready." It was also fascinating to learn that when VMI administrators talked to women at other service academies, the women said that one of the few things that really did bother them was profanity directed at the female anatomy. Accordingly, it was decided that VMI would make some effort to clean up its rampant profanity. At the suggestion of one thoughtful cadet, a belt sander was taken to the classroom desks to remove the graffiti.

There are also reminders that women brought some much-needed changes. Thanks to them the campus got better lighting. Thanks to them the toilets got doors. Thanks to them, the track-and-field coach informed his athletes: "Your locker room has new carpet. We now have central heat and air. We have the shower fixed. We have more space. And our field house has been painted for the first time in probably fifty years."

Throughout the book, there were many things I hadn't thought of--VMI had to come up with a dating policy, for example, which meant one administrator had to define "date," which is surprisingly hard--and results I never would have predicted. Whereas alumni giving declined sharply at lofty places like Princeton right after coeducation, at VMI (a phenomenally well-endowed public institution) it actually increased. Brodie speculates that this is because the alumni didn't feel the school had sold them out: As they saw it, VMI had fought the good fight in fighting against women, had lost, and there was nothing to do but make the best of it. Another intriguing tidbit had to do with physical training, which is controversial at VMI and in the military as a whole. Unlike other places, VMI refused to have a different physical test for women than men. At the end of a year the women could do far fewer pull-ups than the men--a much-touted weakness--but Brodie also reveals that the women were averaging 78 sit-ups in two minutes to the men's 76.

Brodie doesn't gloss over the downside and hardships of assimilating women into the macho culture of VMI. Well, maybe she does gloss over them. It's impossible to know and in the end I don't care. She's got too much good stuff. Overall, her book is admirably even-handed and that, combined with the details, is enough for me. But what lingers most in my mind is another offhand comment she makes halfway through. While researching the book, Brodie was talking to a friend about VMI, and the friend commented that the issues raised by coeducation seemed to crystallize the central debate among feminists; when making one's way in a man's world, do you want to be treated exactly the same or do you want to be treated differently, because in some ways you are different? This is a question that has never been resolved, anywhere, in any office or any school or any home, and Brodie's book is a fascinating study of one unlikely place that's trying.