Friday, August 22, 1997 Female rat to leave is among 14 cadets to quit since opening day There was no glee at VMI over the first female's departure, because cadets and administrators put in a lot of work to bring women into the system, an administrator said. By DAVID REED ASSOCIATED PRESS The first woman to drop out of Virginia Military Institute's torturous ratline'' left quietly late Wednesday after deciding the regimented lifestyle and constant mental harassment were not for her. She was the fifth freshman overall to leave VMI since 460 of them, including 30 women, enrolled Monday, ending the school's 158-year all-male policy. Nine more men left Thursday, bringing the dropout total to 14. The school refused to identify those who left. But the Richmond Times-Dispatch, in a story for publication today, identified the female dropout as Amanda Moore of Klingerstown, Pa. Reached by telephone Thursday, Moore declined to comment, the newspaper said. "She just felt the military system was not for her,'' said Tom Warburton, a senior from Pulaski. He and the school's professional counselors talked to the woman for several hours to make sure she really wanted to quit. The woman had finished the opening day of the six-month tribulation VMI uses to test the physical, mental and emotional limits of all first-year students, or "rats.'' Until March, each rat must observe strict rules of discipline, live in Spartan barracks, march wherever they go on campus and do endless rounds of push-ups. Wednesday afternoon, 108 upperclass drillmasters got face-to-face with the rats and began screaming orders, insults and arcane questions at them, punishing the slightest lapses with push-ups and other exercises. During the dinner break, with a few hours of light military drills still ahead before the 10:30 curfew, the woman decided she could not endure four years in such a system, Warburton said. Most dropouts "have no problem completing the military training. It's a mental game, and they find they don't want to play that game. She fell into that case as well,'' he said. Five percent of freshmen usually quit in the first week, and 15 percent leave by the end of the first semester, according to VMI attrition records during the past 11 years. If those figures hold this year, one or two women and 21 or 22 men will leave by Monday. Superintendent Josiah Bunting III said as the six-month initiation began that he expected several women to quit but hoped their attrition rate was no higher than that for men. The Supreme Court ruled in June 1996 that the state-supported school must accept women. VMI began planning to integrate women into its corps shortly afterward, determined not to suffer the embarrassment South Carolina's military college, The Citadel, endured since Shannon Faulkner became the first woman to enroll there in 1995. Faulkner spent four days in The Citadel's infirmary, then left as male cadets cheered. Four women enrolled there last fall, but two left in January saying male cadets singled them out for extra hazing. None of the 14 rats who had left VMI by Thursday cited hazing or improper harassment as a reason, said Col. Leroy Hammond, chief assistant to the superintendent. "None of the reasons for departure have anything sinister about them,'' he said. Hammond said there was no glee at VMI over the first female's departure, because cadets and administrators put in a lot of work to bring women into the system. Warburton said he left the woman with reassuring words. "I told her it takes more strength oftentimes to decide to leave VMI than stay in a system in which you don't belong.''