If This Had Been The Other Way Around... 

This story would be put into a totally different light:

AUBURN, N.Y. - Claiming they were deceived about attending a women's school, two Wells College students are suing to prevent the school from admitting men until after this year's freshman class graduates.

The suit was filed on behalf of freshman Lauren Searle-Lebel of Arcata, Calif., and sophomore Jennifer LaBarbera of Fredonia.

The students seek preliminary and permanent injunctions to stop the school, founded in 1868 as a woman's liberal arts college, from admitting men before fall 2008. The suit also seeks undetermined punitive damages and "any other such further relief as the court deems just and proper."

If this were the other way around, can you imagine the media uproar? Can you imagine what the ACLU or NOW would be doing if men had dared sue to keep women out of an all men's college? Oh wait, we already know how that story turned out when a woman sued to gain entrance into VMI, and eventually won.

Now then, I suppose that one could argue that the circumstance are somewhat different. In the VMI case, a student sued the school to have their admission rules changed. In the case of Wells College, the school itself is preemptively changing their policies of their own accord. The school's claim is that enrollment has been steadily dropping as more and more women choose to go to co-ed schools. They are simply changing their policies to remain competitive. But are the circumstances really all that different? After all, the men at VMI could have had the exact same complaint as the women at Well's. No matter what caused a change in admission policies (a lawsuit or school board decision), the circumstances of their education which they paid for have changed without their consent.

Yet the stories that we read have entirely different spins to them. Anyone who opposed the change at VMI would very quickly be described as a sexist pig, who were behind the times by about 50 years. In this case we have a group of brave women fighting for their rights, and upholding a long tradition at a school that has only ever admitted women. So which is it? Is maintaining an single sex school an acceptable tradition or is it sexist, and something that should be abolished everywhere? There are lots of schools around to choose from, both co-ed and single sex. But if there is a market for a single sex school, and there are people who want to go to that kind of school, should their be forced integration? If we're going to make that decision in one case, then we need do it for both. Enough hypocrisy.