c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is an Episcopal priest in Winston-Salem, N.C., an author and former Wall Street Journal reporter. E-mail him at journey(at)interpath.com)

UNDATED _ In many ways The Citadel, the Charleston, S.C., military school, is an embarrassment to the New South. Its adamant opposition to admitting women is out of step with corporate capitals like Atlanta and Charlotte, N.C., where women comprise half of those training for management.

Additionally, The Citadel’s harsh treatment of”knobs,”or first-year students, seems bizarre alongside the tolerance of college towns like Chapel Hill and Durham. Its brutal treatment of female knobs _ death threats, extreme sexual harassment, setting the women’s clothes on fire _ seems medieval in a region that has come to pride itself on modernity.

And yet The Citadel seems more mystery than symbol of evil. It may be an extreme variation on a common theme.

The Citadel entered my consciousness when I moved to Charlotte and a Citadel alumnus whom I admired told me,”Go to Charleston on a Friday in spring, and watch the cadets march on the parade ground.”Then I read Pat Conroy’s caustic take on The Citadel in”Lords of Discipline.”Conroy, also an alumnus, described the school as barbaric, racist, paranoid and violent.

Then came Shannon Faulkner, who masked her gender when applying for admission, stirred a firestorm, and soon withdrew, her health and spirit broken. Male cadets cheered her collapse.

At this point, the U.S. Supreme Court had had enough. The Citadel’s doors were forced open to women. But the first women on campus tell of unrelenting hostility from male students and indifference from the administration. The women fear for their lives.

My read on this is that for many years, The Citadel accurately reflected some of the values of the South. Its odd ways were tolerated, even admired. But the world moved on, and The Citadel remained frozen in time, increasingly out of touch with the environment it is supposedly pledged to serving. What seemed quaint and manly a generation ago looks absurd today to all but a few.

Before we judge The Citadel, however, we might ask what else seems frozen in time. Residential patterns, for example; segregation in churches; a plantation attitude toward young wannabes in law firms; the use of sex to market products; a minimum wage that can’t support a life; racial prejudice; children having babies; and the unstable carrying guns.

It may be that the aura of progress and tolerance prevailing today is just that, an aura, a vapor, a fluttering of the breeze without solid foundation. It may be that, despite decades of work, torts, and laws, we remain a racist, sexist, intolerant and violent society.

If so, then The Citadel remains a mirror, not an aberration. It’s the logical extension of our own attitudes. As such, it should frighten us and sober us, not leave us sneering at some mossy backwater.

How different is The Citadel from a Wall Street law firm that expects seven-day work weeks from its recruits and to hell with families? Or from a trendy Web publishing venture that jettisons two-thirds of its employees at the first sign of red ink? Or from a public school that expects total loyalty from its teachers, plus free overtime, then lays them off in an instant when student populations change? Or from a father who drinks away his children’s food, or a wife who violates her marital vows?

The issue is larger than a stubborn military school. It’s our prevailing attitude toward people, namely, that people don’t matter. Profit matters, tradition matters, political victory matters, pleasure matters, but plain old people don’t matter. That’s the issue at The Citadel.

The school and its supporters nurture an environment in which tradition and an antiquated view of manliness matter more than people. Therefore, young men conclude that the women in their midst don’t matter, have no rights, and deserve whatever ill treatment the boys can invent.

But how different is that from the company that treats people as expendable integers in a profit-and-loss analysis? Or the politician who views people as poll statistics to be manipulated?

Our nation needs someone who remembers that the first words of the Constitution are,”We the people.”Maybe The Citadel would like to defend that historic cause.

MJP END EHRICH