Storming the Citadel : For 151 years, the state college has been all male. That tradition may fall if Shannon Faulkner gets her way. Among her big-name foes: South Carolina.

“The success of Citadel men is no surprise. . .This experience builds character and self-confidence, instills integrity and honor. The Citadel refers to it as developing the ‘Whole Man,’ that which you will become if you complete the challenge before you . . . a ‘Citadel Man.’ ” --Lt. Gen. Claudius E. Watts III, president, the Citadel, in a message to 1993 freshman *

The first question Shannon Faulkner usually gets is: Why?

Why in the world would a teen-ager who collects antique teddy bears and porcelain masks want to force herself into a place like the Citadel?

A place where the first thing they do to you is shave your head and make you walk in the gutter.

Why would someone who calls herself a Southern belle--and cringes at the label “feminist”--opt to go up against this 151-year-old institution in a legal battle?

Since suing this military-flavored state college over its males-only admissions policy, Faulkner has been rattling off her reasons.

A good education, she told “Good Morning America” and “Today.”

The discipline of military training at a college near her home, she told Time and Newsweek.

The legendary Citadel network could be hers someday, she always concludes.

In the not too distant future, maybe during a job interview or at a professional conference somewhere, she’d like to flash that coveted Citadel ring, with its rifle and saber, and get a flash of recognition in return.

“People are always asking me if I really think the network is going to work for me too,” says Faulkner, who wants to be a teacher, not a soldier--not even a soldier/citizen. “If I wear the ring just like they do, I believe so, yes, because I made it through the same system they did. I believe they’ll respect me just as much.”

*

Shannon Faulkner is not typical of the barrier-breakers America has come to know since the 1960s. She is a quiet achiever, not a brick-thrower.

In fact, if she is typical of anything, it is of a Citadel cadet.

She has those “yes ma’am, no ma’am” Southern manners. She was a varsity athlete and drum major in the marching band at her high school in Powdersville, a small town 200 miles northwest of here, where the politics are conservative and the accents lilt. She plays the flute, tuba and xylophone. She has military in her family, although no Citadel graduates. Her love for the South is all-consuming.

“I don’t believe in everything that the South used to believe in--the Old South. But I still believe in Southern hospitality, a Southern gentleman and a Southern belle,” she says.

And just as Citadel men pride themselves on being gentleman and on enduring hardship without whining, Faulkner boasts her skills as a steel magnolia.

In junior high, she dislocated her kneecap and had to have surgery. The physical pain was excruciating but she never squawked.

“A true Southern woman will not cry in public because that is not what she is taught,” she says. “It’s an emotion that you feel only when you’re by yourself. I know women of my grandmother’s generation who will not cry at their husband’s funeral. They wait until they’re all by themselves.”

Yet confronting the Citadel the way Faulkner has--literally challenging its manhood--would test the strength of the toughest Southern granny.

Faulkner has been called a lesbian by a perfect stranger; her car was heaped with garbage and her parents’ home pelted with eggs; she has received piles of mostly hate mail from people calling her such names as “sick bitch” and “loser.” When she answered a question during a class at the Citadel, she was hissed. The teacher ignored the disturbance.

“Before I came here, I talked to some graduates and they said, ‘Well, the stuff you’ve been going through outweighs any of the hell we went through our first year.’ ”

In other words, Faulkner may not be in the Corps of Cadets yet--she can attend class but cannot wear the uniform, live in the barracks nor eat in the mess hall while a federal court weighs her case--but she’s getting some knob (as freshman are called) treatment. Minus the pushups.

Faulkner, who started taking classes last month, is describing these experiences during an interview at the Charleston home of her lawyer, where she is living temporarily. She speaks confidently, yet sometimes sounds like a self-conscious 19-year-old who despite her best efforts, still cares what other people think--and how she looks.

When a photographer begins taking her picture, Faulkner, who recently lost 10 pounds and had a perm, grabs a small pillow on the couch and hugs it.

“I’m used to photographers, but I’m not,” she says dryly.

*

Faulkner’s first notion to apply to the Citadel came around Christmas, 1992, her senior year. A teacher had assigned her class to read a Sports Illustrated article that vividly described recent incidents of racism and hazing against freshmen at the Citadel.

Faulkner and her classmates were stunned that this behavior went on--and at taxpayers’ expense. Faulkner was even more stunned when the teacher mentioned that all but one of the 16 students in the class--a boy--could not enroll.

Faulkner can’t recall exactly why, but she immediately filled out an application.

Later, she asked her guidance counselor to white-out all references to her gender on her transcript and send it in.

“In the back of my mind, I never thought they would accept me,” says Faulkner, who had applied to other South Carolina state schools. “I figured somehow they would know I was a girl.”

Faulkner is convinced that the Citadel admissions officials barely looked at her transcript. If they had, they would have noticed “Varsity Softball, Six Years” written on the top.

“Varsity softball in South Carolina means girls,” Faulkner says. “The boys here play baseball.”

It was not long before the school got wind of Faulkner’s ruse and revoked her acceptance--even though she was academically superior to the 1993 freshman profile.

Faulkner had a 3.7 grade-point average and a 1,040 total score on her SATs; Citadel freshman average a 2.5 grade-point and 967 on their SATs. (The school accepts nearly everybody who applies: Of the 1,472 applicants from last year, 1,236 were accepted, 611 enrolled and 80% were from the South.)

Faulkner filed her lawsuit soon after.

“I’ve never been pushed by outside forces,” Faulkner says. “There was just something inside of me that wanted to do this.”

For many Citadel cadets, it is a major sticking point that Faulkner’s application was predicated on a lie. She was violating the honor code emblazoned on the front of each of the four barracks: “A cadet does not lie, cheat, or steal nor tolerate those who do.”

But even if Citadel men could get beyond that--and most can’t--every time Shannon Faulkner walks across the parade grounds where cadets have been proudly marching every Friday since the Civil War or when she walks on the sidewalk instead of in the gutter, she is walking all over their traditions.

And from the youngest, palest, skinniest cadet to strapping Gen. Watts himself, they make it clear: That hurts.

*

Perhaps it’s not enough just to ask why Faulkner wants to go there. Women have been storming men’s clubs since before the first Citadel cadet lifted a musket.

A better question is why the Citadel is fighting to defend something that seems anathema in the 1990s.

Why 18 years after West Point and Annapolis accepted women and during a time when women are Supreme Court justices and astronauts and corporate presidents and even top commanders in Charleston’s naval stations, does the Citadel still not want women in the Corps of Cadets?

Bart Wetherington, a cherubic- faced son of a service station owner from Hilton Head, S.C., says the answers are all over campus.

“Just take a look around,” he says, guiding a visitor through every building and explaining every monument. “It just wouldn’t be the same here. Why does this place have to become like every place else?”

The first stop on Wetherington’s tour is the Citadel museum, chockablock with the intertwined history of the Citadel, the Civil War and the South.

The school was founded in 1842 by an act of the South Carolina Legislature to keep peace and prevent slave rebellions. Historians credit Citadel cadets with firing the shots that started the Civil War.

The campus itself looks like a collection of castles in Camelot with crenelated turrets. The class buildings and four barracks are laid out in a square around a vast but impeccable parade ground. Walking the campus are young, clean-shaven men in gray uniforms and shiny shoes. On a rainy day, they walk erect to class wearing long gray slickers and brimmed hats. But even on a sunny day, they would seem purposeful. You’d never see a cadet sprawled on the grass or throwing a Frisbee across the green.

Wetherington, the senior class president who hopes his 3.0 average and Citadel connections will help him get into medical school, says there’s no time for such frivolity. In fact, the regimentation of student life and intramural sports leaves time for little else.

“We’re not going to have the most brilliant students here,” he says. “There’s so much else going on other than academics.”

Tuesdays and Thursdays, there is a 7 a.m. drill; every day there are sweeps and muster formations; Saturday morning inspection is 7 a.m. to 11 a.m., and, of course, Friday 2:20 to 5 p.m. is parade.

Freshman year is particularly grueling because the goal--almost the sport--is to weed out the fainthearted. It is easy to pick out the freshman, turning corners at 90-degree angles as they walk the campus. In the snack bar, they’re the acne-faced boys leaning against the counters and staring blankly at their slice of “Itza Pizza.” They’re not allowed to sit down at the snack bar, but many choose to eat there before meals because in the mess hall, they must sit at attention throughout the meal and serve upperclassmen water and condiments. That doesn’t leave much time to eat.

“You’re yelled at whether you do something wrong or right,” recalls Wetherington of his first year. “But after freshman year, there’s relief. And by sophomore year, if you shine your shoes and do what you’re supposed to do, you’re a leader and you can guide and direct freshman.”

The school’s image has certainly been tarnished by upperclassmen who have decided to give as good as they got--if not worse. Pat Conroy, a 1967 graduate, wrote an unsentimental novel, “The Lords of Discipline,” about a group of cadets literally torturing the first black cadet.

“You’re going to have your instances when upperclassmen get a little nuts or overzealous,” Wetherington says. “But those cases will be taken care of and 99% will get caught.”

But every decade or so, the school takes stock of hazing and racism, ordering up reports on barracks life after hours and recommending changes. For example, Hell Night was recently banned, and in 1992, “Dixie” was finally given up as a fight song at football games because it offended black faculty and cadets. Defenders insist that an average Saturday night on Fraternity Row across the country makes life in the unsupervised barracks seem tame.

The stark life in those barracks, the regimentation, the man-against-man competition, the common showers are all critical to turning boys into Citadel men and are examples of a rigorous standard that women would change, cadets contend.

And then there are the pushups.

Twice a semester, every student must run two miles in 15 minutes, 54 seconds; do 42 pushups and 52 sit-ups.

“Having girls here would lower our standards,” Wetherington says.

In a deposition in this case, Gen. Watts insisted that women would “take away from the wholistic experience. . . .You’re going to have equals among unequals. You’re going to have dual standards.”

So what if women can’t do 42 pushups, says Shannon Faulkner’s advocates; many cadets also cannot. Those who don’t pass the twice-semester test are put into a remedial group and must take extra physical education. But a cadet who never meets the physical standards still can graduate and wear the ring, Wetherington says.

Yet Wetherington notes that physical standards are only part of why women wouldn’t succeed at the Citadel: Women would inhibit discussions, he says, and male cadets wouldn’t open up emotionally if they were in the classroom.

(Wetherington, the chief religious leader among cadets, notes with a smile that he is taking several science classes this semester as well as evolution to “learn how the other side thinks.”)

“The learning environment is obviously one of a kind,” says Wetherington, interrupting himself with a grimace. “Well, now it’s two of a kind. If you put a woman in class, you have to watch everything you say. If you call somebody a ‘girl’ you can get a sexual harassment charge.”

*

At lunch, in the mess hall among 2,000 cadets, several cadets raise the same idea: their fear of women squelching camaraderie. There were similar acrimony and doomsayers when blacks first enrolled in the mid-1960s. Did that change wreck the school?

Norman P. Doucet Jr., the top cadet this year, is calm and eloquent about the life of “Citadel men,” and he is one of the few cadets who doesn’t use the “distraction” defense against women cadets.

“If you put Shannon in this environment, she could march; she could attend parade. That’s not the point. The point is the majority of students here pay to come here. And they’re not interested in having women here; let them go to an all-female military institution.”

Doucet becomes agitated only when Faulkner is compared to Charles Foster, who ended segregation at the school in 1966.

“It’s a ludicrous comparison,” he says. “There is a difference between male and female. Physiologically and psychologically. With white and black men, there is no real difference except the color of their skin.”

Twenty-eight years after Foster desegregated the Citadel, Doucet became the first black regimental commander of the Corps of Cadets. It was an appointment made by the administration during the same school year that Sports Illustrated skewered the Citadel for racism and Shannon Faulkner blasted it for sex discrimination.

In the publicity frenzy that has followed Faulkner, the administration has often asked Doucet to represent the Citadel’s view.

“The issue is choice not discrimination,” Doucet says. “Charles Foster was a man. A black man. In company units you live, eat and sleep together. There is no separatism like at other colleges.”

He can’t understand why Faulkner doesn’t want to attend a U.S. military academy and isn’t convinced of her argument that she is committed to South Carolina, not to the military, and that as a taxpayer she should have the right to attend a school that receives 28% of its funds from the state.

“She says doesn’t want to destroy the Citadel. . .” Doucet says.

“Oh, yes, she does,” interrupts Ronald Doyle, the master chief petty officer.

”. . .But when it’s gone, it’s gone for ever,” continues Doucet, who concluded from a visit to a friend at West Point that women had “eroded that system.”

“The best thing we can do for Shannon,” he adds, “is train her to be an outstanding young man.”

Wetherington concludes the tour with a similar message to Faulkner: “As you can see, the Citadel is unique. We hope Shannon finds someplace else to get what she wants. But leave us alone.”

*

There are a wealth of legal issues likely to come out in this battle, which resumes Thursday in U.S. District Court in Charleston.

Is it tolerable for the state to support a school that bans women? Is the Citadel so unique? Does the state have a legitimate interest in educating men separate from women? Could a separate school be created for women that would be equal?

Already some of these issues have been raised in pleadings before the courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.

Each side has an impressive legal team.

The Citadel has recruited lawyers from firms in Charleston, Washington and Atlanta, including former Atty. Gen. Griffin Bell. The state of South Carolina is also representing the school.

In addition to her Powdersville lawyer and the U.S. Justice Department, Faulkner has attorneys from Charleston, New York and Washington. And she has the American Civil Liberties on her side--which, Faulkner points out, is not necessarily a plus in the South.

She has been well schooled in the ACLU’s involvement in desegregation in the 1960s and understands what their reappearances means in the 1990s.

“The ACLU really ticks a lot of people off down here,” she says. “It’s like ‘Here they come again.”’

Many issues in this case have already been played out through a similar case made by the Justice Department against the Virginia Military Institute, the only other all-male, state-supported military college in the nation.

In that case, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered co-education at VMI but offered three alternatives: admit women, go private or create a parallel program for women.

The school chose the third remedy and last week presented to the district court a plan to add a military component to Mary Baldwin College, a women’s school also in Virginia.

South Carolina’s legislature has already worked up a report concluding this could work for the Citadel, too.

So just as the state sends its veterinary students to Georgia because there’s no vet school in South Carolina, it could send Citadel women to Mary Baldwin.

M. Dawes Cooke Jr., the Citadel’s lawyer, says he’ll present witnesses to show an educational justification for the state to support single-gender schools such as the Citadel, and to provide an explanation for why there is no all-female counterpart.

“Well, we had one,” Cooke says. “Winthrop College. . . .But there was no interest. It was on the verge of really going out of business back in 1972 when it went co-ed.”

“That was more than 20 years ago,” counters Valorie Vojdik, Faulkner’s New York counsel. “Plus, neither Winthrop nor Mary Baldwin are the Citadel. Part of what they’re arguing is how unique the school is. Well, we don’t believe the education, the network, the training can be replicated at Mary Baldwin nor anywhere else. The only proper remedy to this case is to integrate.”

And Vojdik says she will rebuke any claims that all-male schools serve society similarly to all-female schools.

“Basically, there’s scant evidence that proves the value of single-gender education for college men,” she says. “They’re not the ones falling behind in the classroom. And if there’s a group that has been privileged, it has been white men in South Carolina.”

Yet at a recent meeting, the school’s governing Board of Visitors--all but one white male Citadel graduates--seemed confident of the direction of the lawsuit.

Gen. Watts, whose father and son graduated from the Citadel, told them that he was delighted by the $200,000 raised through one mailing to alumni for a legal defense fund.

“This is unheard of in fund-raising circles,” Watts says proudly.

But the school has a much bigger fund-raising challenge ahead.

In the next few years, the school must replace the campus’s four barracks, which are 50 to 70 years old.

At a price of $50 million and with needs from all funding sources, the general can’t afford to anger the South Carolina legislators, the alumni nor corporate America, which might be reluctant to give money to a school aggressively keeping women out. (Although, the all-male tradition clearly didn’t stop Ted Turner, president of CNN and a graduate of the Citadel--like his sons Ted Jr., Beau and Rhett--from pledging $25 million last week, the largest donation in the school’s history.)

In the meantime, the Citadel is facing a changing mission.

Although the emphasis is still military, students are decreasingly signing up after college. Less than one-third of the students now join the service, and by the time Shannon Faulkner’s class graduates, less than 20% will seek military commissions.

Rather, most Citadel graduates now head straight for the job market.

Although he is a fervent Citadel loyalist, Stephen Columbia, who attended the school in the late ‘70s, thinks Citadel men might as well learn to work with women in college because they’ll be working with them once they leave.

“We’re not just educating officers in the U.S. military anymore; we’re educating private sector leaders,” says Columbia, who lives in Boston and recruits for the school all over New England. “This is a remarkable place. We have no cheating, no borrowing exams. . . .So to reduce this school and its extraordinary opportunity to a last bastion of single-gender education diminishes its value.”

Although Columbia repeatedly points out that he in no way represents the alumni nor administration’s position, perhaps they too have an inkling that the future might mean change.

According to a report in the Charleston Post and Courier in October, the Board of Visitors approved an architectural design for the first barracks that allow for a future with female cadets, says Col. Bob Barton, a Citadel official.

“In the design, it’s easy to convert some areas that are essentially storage areas into latrines and showers,” he says. “We’re not automatically doing it, but if the courts order us to admit women, we can make changes at minimal costs.”