Pregnant Cadet Poses Another First for VMI

A cadet at the Virginia Military Institute is pregnant, less than four years after the 162-year-old school admitted its first female students, VMI officials said Friday.

The cadet, who was not identified, was offered a chance to take a leave of absence from the school or move to separate quarters but chose to continue living in the barracks, school officials said. The father was not identified.

“Right now she’s planning on staying in the barracks and seeing through this semester, which ends May 19,” school spokesman Col. Mike Strickler said.

VMI, the nation’s oldest military college, admitted only male cadets for its first 157 years. In June 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a landmark sex discrimination case that the school’s all-male admission policy unconstitutionally discriminated against women.

VMI decided that September to bow to the Supreme Court ruling. It was the nation’s last state-supported military academy to bar women; the Citadel in South Carolina had made a similar decision three months earlier.

VMI admitted its first women in August 1997. The school currently has about 1,280 cadets, 61 of whom are women. It requires cadets to be unmarried.

The school said it could not reveal any personal details about the pregnant cadet. The Roanoke Times newspaper identified her as a junior from Virginia.

The school reported the pregnancy to both the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. District Court in Roanoke. VMI’s assimilation of women is under court supervision as a result of the landmark lawsuit, Strickler said.

“This is a first for us. We’re concerned for her and her health and how the corps of cadets reacts to this,” he said. “We hope they’ll just take it in stride. It’s something very different and probably not something that some of the cadets are that crazy about.”