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- <text id=92TT2355>
- <title>
- Oct. 19, 1992: Marching Forward
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- Oct. 19, 1992 The Homestretch: Clinton in Control
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- THE WEEK, Page 22
- SOCIETY
- Marching Forward
- </hdr><body>
- <p>A court ruling paves the way for women at Virginia Military
- Institute
- </p>
- <p> Defenders call it a bonding experience between college-age
- men sharing the rigorous physical regimen and discipline of a
- military education. Opponents call it state-sanctioned
- discrimination that ultimately bars women from access to power.
- Last week a federal appeals court in Richmond called it
- unconstitutional and ruled that the elite Virginia Military
- Institute must remedy its all-male admissions policy by opening
- its 153-year-old doors to both sexes, providing a separate
- program for women or forfeiting more than $10 million a year in
- state money. But while the decision overturns a lower-court
- ruling, it sends a mixed message by not ordering V.M.I.
- outright to admit women. Feminists say this demonstrates the
- reticence of even the court to tread on the Old Dominion that
- spawns many of the nation's leaders.
- </p>
- <p> School officials and faithful alumni contend it is simply
- a matter of diversity in approaches to education that, if
- stymied, will backfire. "It's going to be the death knell of
- single-sex education," warns Stephen C. Fogleman, chairman of
- an alumni task force fighting the change. But two of the options
- presented by the court are highly unlikely, says an A.C.L.U.
- lawyer who supported the Justice Department's case against
- V.M.I. "The handwriting is on the wall. The only way to cure
- this constitutional defect is to admit women."
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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