14 Vmi Rats Jump Ship On First Day One Woman, 13 Men Find Rigors Of Military Life Too Tough To Take

The first woman to drop out of Virginia Military Institute’s torturous “rat line” left after deciding the regimented lifestyle and constant mental harassment were not for her.

The woman, who left late Wednesday night, joins 13 men in dropping out of this year’s freshman class of 460 who arrived at the school on Monday. VMI ended its 158-year-old all-male policy this year with the admission of 30 women. The school refused to identify those who left.

“She just felt the military system was not for her,” Tom Warburton, a senior, said of the woman student. Warburton 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 at attention wherever they go on campus and do endless rounds of push-ups.

Wednesday afternoon, 108 upper class 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 p.m. curfew, the woman decided she could not endure four years in such a system, Warburton said.

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 citing hazing.