Debate Takes Toll On Citadel Applications, Income Decline After School Rejects Woman

As the all-male Citadel waits for its future to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, the battle to keep women out of the military college has taken its toll: Student admissions and income are down.

“It’s a classic story of a failure of leadership from top to bottom - good old boys going in exactly the wrong direction,” said Robert Black, one of the lawyers who brought the discrimination lawsuit against the school.

The dropping numbers are a concern, said Jimmy Jones, chairman of The Citadel’s Board of Visitors, but “We’re not going down the tubes.”

The high court could rule today on a similar lawsuit against Virginia Military Institute, the only other all-male public college in the country. VMI officials said they expect the ruling to be among the decisions handed down.

If the court sides with VMI on its separate-but-equal arrangement with Mary Baldwin College, a private women’s college in Staunton, Va., there will be a trial in Charleston to determine if The Citadel’s sister program at Converse College is similar enough to what women would receive if they were admitted to The Citadel.

However, a ruling against Virginia’s dual programs could spell the end for the all-male corps at The Citadel, Jones said.

“We are not a static, stand-still group,” Jones said. “We’re going to get about being the best possible institution we can be.”

The federal government sued VMI and Virginia in 1990, contending the all-male policy unlawfully discriminates against women. The government relied partly on a 1982 Supreme Court ruling that said Mississippi could not bar men from a state-supported nursing school.

Meanwhile, Jones acknowledges that both income and admissions have fallen at The Citadel since Shannon Faulkner sued the school in March 1993.

In the past five years, applications to the school have dropped by 16.5 percent, from 1,136 in 1991 to 948 in 1996.

The number of students not returning also increased, causing the school to cut expenditures in January to avoid a $500,000 shortfall. This past fall, the school began with 1,917 cadets, but 212 did not return for the spring semester.

In January 1993, Faulkner applied for admission, removing all references to gender in her transcript. She was accepted, then was sent a rejection letter when Citadel officials discovered she is a woman.

She sued and won admission into the cadet corps in August. She lasted a week, citing stress.