CITADEL GETS A WAY OUT

Converse College, a private women's institution in Spartanburg, S.C., will establish a $10 million program to help keep women out of the Citadel. Under the plan, women would take academic courses at Converse and receive their military training at a site other than the Citadel. State officials had approached the college after courts had ruled that the Citadel had until August to either admit women to its cadet corps or establish a separate but equal program elsewhere. Lawyers for Shannon Faulkner, whose legal battle to be admitted into the state-run Citadel prompted the arrangement, said the program is not an acceptable substitute: "For women to be leaders of men, they can't learn such skills in the absence of men on the powder-puff campus of Converse." TIME Pentagon correspondent Mark Thompson concurs, saying "I don't think it can be separate but equal. Generally, freedom of association should allow you to choose with whom you associate. But in this case taxpayer dollars are involved, and it makes it more problematic."