VMI’s First Female Cadets Graduate

The first female cadets to survive four years at the Virginia Military Institute, the nation’s last public military school for men, received their diplomas Saturday.

The women--13 who graduated in May and one who graduated in December--were part of a class of 250.

“Our country watched for you to make mistakes,” said VMI’s superintendent, Maj. Gen. Josiah Bunting III. “And you made none.”

The women were the last of the 25 female freshmen who stepped into VMI’s barracks in the fall of 1997. Eleven dropped out because of the tough regimen. Five others came to the school as upperclassmen and graduated earlier. Ten women are expected to be seniors next year.

“I’m so proud. At first, I tried to talk her out of it, but she stuck with it,” Harry Mars, a police officer from Hopewell, Va., said of his daughter, 22-year-old Tamina Mars. “She said, ‘Dad, I’m going to finish what I started.’ ”

Beginning in 1839, VMI was a place where boys came to be molded into so-called citizen soldiers. Gens. George S. Patton and George C. Marshall both learned to stand at attention here.

Although other military schools began admitting women in the 1970s and ‘80s, VMI resisted. Administrators finally changed the policy under orders from the U.S. Supreme Court.

The commencement speaker, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), spoke of his years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and advised the cadets to choose their futures with care.