Breaking Out: Vmi and the Coming of Women - Hardcover

A woman who served on the Virginia Military Institute's integration committee analyze's the school's struggle with instituting coeducation in the wake of a landmark 1996 Supreme Court order. 25,000 first printing.

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 perspective 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