VMI in the News

VMI and its women persevere on journey:

LEXINGTON On her first day at Virginia Military Institute, Nohelia Martin walked into the barracks courtyard and was greeted by bedlam.

“Screaming and yelling,” said Martin, recalling the commotion that signaled that year’s renewal of VMI’s storied Rat Line. “I thought, ‘This is ridiculous. Why am I here? I’m going to wait a few minutes to see what happens — and then I’ll leave.’”

But she didn’t go anywhere. She fell in with her company of fellow cadets, visited the barber shop for a military-style haircut and decided to stay. Three years later, Martin, who is about to enter her senior year, cannot imagine attending college anywhere else.

“It’s been an awesome experience,” said Martin, from Prince William County. “I wouldn’t trade this for anything.”

Before 1997, VMI was an experience — awesome or otherwise — that women could only imagine. For its first 158 years, the school was a men-only bastion that fiercely guarded its history and traditions. That ended when the U.S. Supreme Court ordered VMI to open its doors to all. The first coeducational class in VMI history showed up Aug. 18, 1997, and included 30 women.

Ten years later, the integration of women at VMI is still a work in progress — “a journey,” as VMI Superintendent J.H. Binford Peay III likes to say — that has endured rough patches. Of the 1,300 cadets who completed the 2006-07 academic year, fewer than 100 were women. School officials hope to almost double the number of female cadets over time.

“Those will be young ladies who want this very special kind of education,” said Peay, a Richmond native, 1962 VMI graduate and retired four-star Army general who became superintendent in 2003. “They’ll come in here and they’ll struggle, and they’ll get through it.”

The challenge is not only finding women — and men — interested in such a demanding college experience but recruiting against the federal service academies that offer free education in exchange for post-graduate military service. VMI pitches its academics and its intimate size.

When the Class of 2011 arrives in Lexington next month, it is expected to include 44 women, which would make it the second-largest number of women matriculating in a single class. The Class of 2009 started with 51. Nineteen from that first class of 30 in 1997 made it to graduation.

That was Slab’s class. Two years later I entered my rat year, which was the last two semesters that VMI had an all-male class, the class of 2000.

Mixed feelings on this. On one hand, VMI has produced some phenomenal female cadets. Slab has some in his class that have truly excelled, ditto on my class.

On the other hand, I went to an all-male military high school and I understand that it’s an experience that you absolutely can not replicate. Females changed the Institute, not through any actions of their own, but simply by being there. The administration took aggressive steps to prevent a Citadel-esqe Shannon Faulkner incident, and the end result was an ultimate weakening of the overall system and a bloated bureaucracy in barracks (the Commandant’s staff went from 3 officers when I was a rat to 9 today).

Now for the uninitiated, one of the real strengths of VMI was that the barracks environment cultivated a unique brand of leadership. Cadets were tasked with running the corps, between the regimental system (captains, lieutenants, sergeants, corporals) to the class system (president, vice president, class historian).

But as the Commandant’s staff increased, career officers moved in and assumed duties previously reserved for cadets. The oversight on the corps ran the cadet regiment more effectively, yes….but that missed the point. VMI was never about standing up a corporate corps of cadets, it was about giving cadets responsibilities and holding them accountable for the decisions they made as leaders. That system, and the unyielding honor code, is what made VMI cadets great.

The supreme court case changed mentalities. VMI became more concerned with how it was perceived by the outside world and as a result, took leadership out of the hands of cadets and put them into the hands of career military types (there are 3 bird colonels, 2 light colonels, one major, two captains, and one sergeant major currently on staff). That’s to run a corps of 1300 cadets, when the cadets should be running themselves.

I’m worried that this is altering VMI’s cadet output. Instead of producing bold leaders who aren’t afraid to make a decision and be wrong about it, we’re creating the same type of wimpy civilian ROTC cadet who won’t make a head call without asking for permission first.

I do hope that this trend reverses itself.

Update: Oh, and aside from all that. There is this she-det cadet.