By MATT CHITTUM
ROANOKE TIMES

Critics blame the culture, saying misbehavior is condoned.

Incidents like the recently publicized beating of several freshman "rats" at Virginia Military Institute usually happen because students take the rebellious spirit of military schools too far, school administrators admit.

The culture at VMI values risk-taking, bucking authority, even breaking the rules when the time is right. And its training system includes a significant amount of sanctioned abuse, usually forced physical activity and yelling.

Critics say that combination fosters an atmosphere of tacit approval of just about any kind of misbehavior, including hazing.

Administrators "almost condone it in my opinion," said Eileen Stevens, president of the Committee to Halt Useless College Killings.

"I think it's more a naivete, thinking they won't get caught for this stuff," said Col. Mike Bissell, a 1961 VMI graduate who spent a few years as commandant of cadets at VMI and is now the executive director of the plan to assimilate women into the school.

The risk-taking is "part of leadership education," Bissell said. "But part of it is deciding when it's appropriate and when it's not."

That means risks involving "things that don't involve morality and ethics and honor, or any kind of actions that don't involve hurting."

Last year, in the wake of a public relations mess over the hazing of two of the first four women to attend The Citadel, Clifton Poole, then the school's interim president, said the same thing.

"For one thing, that really improves the morale of an organization," Poole said. "It gives them, particularly in a highly structured, highly controlled society, it gives them an outlet, 'We can beat the system. We can do things you can't stop us from doing.'"

Usually, Bissell said, the risks are benign - like sneaking out of the barracks for a night of partying. The officer in charge in the barracks used to do random bed checks, instead of checking every room, thereby offering bolder cadets a chance of not getting caught.

But that ethic, combined with the approved abuse of freshmen in the "ratline" training system, sometimes leads less-mature cadets to take the wrong kind of risks, like striking other cadets with coat hangers.

Stevens, however, said the culture at VMI just sets up a whole different standard for acceptable behavior.

As Hank Nuwer, author of "Broken Pledges," a study of hazing, said, things that might be appalling at the University of Virginia may seem "ordinary" at VMI.

"What [VMI] calls mental games, others may call mental abuse," he said.

VMI and Citadel officials are quick to point out that when rule-breakers are caught, they are punished. Three of the seniors involved in the coat-hanger beatings at VMI were suspended for a semester, while one was punished less severely.

And hazing isn't what it used to be, school officials say.

In 1927, the mode of hazing at VMI was to punch freshmen in the stomach repeatedly, according to press accounts of the time.

But even if hazing is less frequent, it can be just as severe.

A memo from a federal investigation into the events involving the women at The Citadel last year - recently obtained by The Charlotte Observer - included reports of a freshman having his company's letter carved into his chest with a knife, an upperclassman stapling a freshman's chest numerous times and another freshman cut in the face with a sword by an upperclassman.

"What's saddest," Stevens said, "is there are consequences for coming forward." The same culture that convinces students to endure the hazing convinces them to stay quiet. If victims do name names, institutions retaliate by blaming the victim, according to Stevens.

It happened to the two women who left The Citadel last year, when school administrators suggested they made their hazing accusations because their grades were bad and they wanted to avoid taking their exams.

The same has been said at VMI:

"We have evidence to support the fact that this student did not like the military hardship at VMI, and in order that his parents might not compel him to return, told them a story he had rigged up."

Those are the words of the VMI Senior Class President, J.C. West, upon the departure of a VMI freshman amid allegations he was hazed - in 1927.