Sunday, August 24, 1997 VMI awaits return to basics With first coed week behind them, staff and cadets prepare to move on "I wouldn't let out a whole breath for quite a while," said Mike Strickler, director of public relations. "But we can breathe easier." By MADELYN ROSENBERG THE ROANOKE TIMES The satellite trucks are gone now. On the parade grounds at Virginia Military Institute, 438 rats plod over the light tire tracks left by the cars that were parked here all week. But the cars are gone, too. Left, right, left. The training cadre adjusts the length of the cadets' arm swing as they march by. "Nine in front, six in the rear, that's the way we do it here.'' At the center of the field, a lone cadet responds to the hoarse command to "about face." He does it again. Ten more times. With women folded into its ranks, VMI is going back to the business of being VMI, the state's only public military college. "The rats are anxiously awaiting the start of school," said Col. Jim Joyner, commandant for the corps. Everyone will have to study then, offering an occasional respite - in class or the library, anyway - from the "DROP-NOW-AND-GIVE-ME-10'' cadre. "The fourth-classmen are quick to learn," Joyner said. "The cadre says they seem to be pulling together quickly as a group." In formation, VMI's 29 female rats do not stand out, save by height for some of them. "Everyone is in the same uniform," said Chris Floom, a senior from Dumfries. "Everyone has got cover [a hat] on. Everyone looks the same." With the first week of coeducation behind them, VMI administrators are slowly letting out their collective breath. "I wouldn't let out a whole breath for quite a while," said Mike Strickler, director of public relations. "But we can breathe easier." The Citadel, until recently the country's only other all-male public military college, went coed in 1995, but cadet Shannon Faulkner became ill and lasted only a week. In 1996, the college had four female cadets. Two of them left in January, alleging sexual harassment. At VMI, officials are hoping the steps they have taken in the last year will prevent similar incidents. The school has extensively trained the cadre, enrolled a much larger number of female rats than The Citadel and included upperclass female cadets on loan from peer schools. Superintendent Josiah Bunting III said VMI has strong leadership in the senior class at a time when it's needed most. The seniors want everything to be tough, he said, but they have no taste for shenanigans or vulgarities. They have what he termed "a good dose of old-fashioned Stonewall Jackson puritanism." Floom put it simply. "It's not worth it to screw up," he said. "I feel the whole corps is prepared for this entire year." Yes, there were cadets and alums who did not want women here, said Tom Warburton, the S-5 regimental captain from Pulaski. Some probably still feel that way. But in the corps, he said, "we need to get on with it." That's what cadre members did earlier this week when they put Yulia Beltikova, a female rat from Krasnodar, Russia, through her paces. "Crisp. Crisp. Got it?'' And that's what they did later this week, when a cadre member hollered at his entire company: "You write home and say 'MOM, PACK UP MY ... BRAIN AND SEND IT TO VMI, BECAUSE I NEED IT.' Understand me?" Some onlookers had worried that the cadre would be reluctant to put the female cadets through the same adversarial training as the male cadets. Tim Trant, a senior from Disputanta and the regimental commander of the corps, disagreed, saying that if a cadet - male or female - "does not meet the standards of the rest of the company, frustration will overcome hesitation." Trant said women may have a welcome civilizing influence on the corps. Perhaps the barracks will be less like a locker room, he said, and corps members doing such things as "picking their noses" will diminish slightly. Time will tell. But the first five days, at least, are being called a success. "I'm very pleased with the way things are going," said Sam Witt, vice president of the Board of Visitors and a 1958 graduate. "I hope I don't jinx us by saying that, but I'm upbeat and optimistic. I think this first week has been ... happily, a routine first week." As of 5 p.m. Saturday, one female and 21 male rats had left the rigors of the ratline for home. That's an attrition rate of 4.6 percent; the average by the end of the first week is 4.7 percent. Not so routine was the number of phone messages piled up in the public relations office. By Friday evening, Strickler said he and assistant Chuck Steenburgh had returned about a third of the calls from more than 200 media organizations that ranged from USA Today to Oliver North's radio program. Meanwhile, recruiting for next year's rat class is under way. Assistant admissions director Lt. Col. Terri Reddings said she responded to two e-mail inquiries from female high school students this week. All told, her department has received 3,700 inquiries from women who would be in the classes of 2002 and 2003. Coeducation has arrived. George Mercer Brooke Jr., who graduated from VMI in 1936 and went on to head its history department, said Friday he is still a little nostalgic for the VMI his father attended. "As soon as the first woman went in, it wasn't VMI anymore," said Brooke, who lives in Lexington and drove around the parade grounds in the early morning hours last week. "It was a modified VMI. But I think they'll assimilate [the women] as well as can be done. And I think it'll be a fine school. I think it'll work out."