Breaking Out
VMI and the Coming of Women
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
On July 26, 1996, the United States Supreme Court nullified the single-sex admissions policy of the Virginia Military Institute, the last all-male military college in America. Capturing the voices of female and male cadets, administrators, faculty, and alumni, Laura Brodie tells the story of the Institute's intense planning for the inclusion of women and the problems and triumphs of the first year of coeducation.
Brodie takes us into the meetings where every aspect of life at VMI was analyzed from the per-spective of a woman's presence: housing, clothing, haircuts, dating, and the infamous "Ratline"—the months of physical exertion, minimal sleep, and verbal harassment to which entering cadets are subjected. Throughout the process the administration's aim was to integrate women successfully without making adjustments to VMI's physical standards or giving up its tradition of education under extreme stress.
No other military college had done so much to prepare. But would it work? With everyone on the Post, we hold our breath as Brodie takes us through Hell Night, the unrelenting months of the Ratline, the fraternization, hazing, and authority issues that arose, the furtive sexual encounters, the resentments and, for the women, the daily difficulties of maintaining a feminine identity in a predominantly male world. Despite the challenges, we see the women ultimately making a place for themselves. Though new problems continue to arise, Brodie's lively and inspiring account makes it clear that VMI's story is an important and timely one of institutional transformation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A 1970s feminist poster featured cartoon character Nancy burning down a clubhouse that sported a "No Girls" sign on its front door. Nothing so dramatic happened when, in 1989, the Department of Justice told the Virginia Military Institute that it had to admit women. The school fought the order--at a cost of ten million dollars, making a small dent in its $250 million endowment--but the Supreme Court ruled against the school in 1996. In this engrossing, informed and even-handed analysis of the institution's "assimilation" (the word carefully chosen by VMI's administration) of women, Brodie brings a clear, feminist perspective to her analysis of the school's history, students and bureaucracy. As a part-time teacher at VMI, a member of VMI's Executive Committee for the Assimilation of Women and wife of the band director, Brodie has both an insider's and outsider's perspective. In her nuanced and surprising account of VMI's struggle to change deeply embedded traditions, she charts how specific words and phrases in the cadets' established slang had to be altered, how the school's "Code of Gentleman" was viewed as a rudimentary sexual harassment policy and how seriously many of the male cadets assumed the responsibility for making the new system work. She also critiques VMI's all-male history and atmosphere, which have been, in small and large ways, profoundly misogynist. Brodie's account concludes on a cautiously optimistic note, as VMI's first female cadets graduated in 1999 to little controversy.