But she wasn’t ready at all. Standing in school-issue blue T shirt and running shorts and with rain and tears running down her face, Faulkner resigned last week from the institution she had battled so hard to enter. At first it seemed her too-ample flesh was weak, even if her spirit was willing. On her first day of “hell week” –a grueling regimen of marching, drilling and learning to walk in the gutter–Faulkner (and four male cadets) couldn’t take the soupy 100-degree heat. She threw up her lunch, spent most of the week in the infirmary and briefly went to the hospital. But Faulkner insists that what ailed her was largely psychological. “All the stress I’ve had I just kept bottled up inside,” she told NEWSWEEK at her house in rural Powdersville, S.C., the day after she resigned (box). As word of Faulkner’s departure caromed across The Citadel’s checkerboard quad, cadets whooped and danced as if the Bulldogs had just upset Army. It took an industrious cadre of upperclassmen just an hour to create a new march-to-the-mess-hall chant: “Marching down the avenue/Now we know that Faulkner’s through/I am happy and so are you!” Author Pat Conroy, a Faulkner supporter whose novel “The Lords of Discipline” is based on his four years at the school, was appalled. “They made sure that everyone in America saw that that college hates women,” Conroy told NEWSWEEK. “They’ve made a blood sport of hating in South Carolina.”
The feminists, Yankees and assorted lawyers who contributed thousands of hours and a few million dollars to get Faulkner into the state-funded Citadel refuse to call her departure a defeat. “Shannon has done what no other woman has–she put this issue on the table,” says her attorney Robert Black. But for now, the good ole boys who kept The Citadel female-free for all but a week of the last 153 years are claiming victory. “She was the first female to enter, the first female to fail and the first female to leave,” says Floyd Gibson, a 1944 Citadel graduate. “Her quitting is best for The Citadel and for our country.”
On the first day of hell week, Faulkner poked her head out of Law Barracks room $344–specially outfitted for her with a door lock, private bathroom and shower and security cameras, at a cost of $25,000–and was the first one down the stairs at 5:20 a.m. Instructors barked orders–“Faulk-her, stop looking around!”–as they did at the 590 other first-year cadets (known as “knobs” because of their crewcuts). The school had posted a black flag warning of the heat and requiring knobs to drink water frequently. But at lunch, says Faulkner’s father, Ed, the cadets were forced to eat large quantities of a noodle casserole, and Shannon began feeling sick. “Sir, I feel nauseous, sir,” she told Ray Gerber, one of the five cadets authorized to speak to her. Gerber escorted Faulkner to the mess-tent bathroom. After she vomited, he took her to the on-campus infirmary, where she rested and tried to rehydrate. She returned to the corps about 4 p.m., but 75 minutes later she was breathing shallowly and sweating profusely–even though the exercises had moved into an air-conditioned building.
She returned to the infirmary, where the nurses inserted an IV, but she was too dehydrated to keep it in. She was unable to keep down grits or chicken soup and subsisted largely on Gatorade. She needed help getting to the bathroom. Faulkner stayed in the infirmary until last Thursday. But after her stomach pain continued, she went to a Charleston hospital to get X-rayed for ulcers. Found to be basically healthy, she returned to the infirmary two hours later. “It got harder and harder,” she said, “being isolated from the rest of my corps.”
By Friday morning, after getting sick on the scrambled eggs she ate with the cadets, she made up her mind to leave. She insists it was her decision alone. No one pressured her, although Ed Faulkner says school officials had packed up his daughter’s room early Friday, before she had even told her family about her plans. “Shannon was very surprised,” says Ed, a fence-company owner, who came to Charleston to see his daughter on Friday afternoon. When she told the family she was going to quit, “there was relief after that,” Ed says.
To understand why anyone would subject herself, however briefly, to such hell requires knowing about The Citadel’s place in Southern culture. More than Harvard or even the military academies, a Citadel school ring is a first-class ticket to Carolina success. U.S. Sen. Ernest Hollings is an alumnus, as are Charleston Mayor Joseph Riley and several country clubs’ worth of businessmen. School officials tolerate intolerable treatment of underclassmen because they believe they are building an elite breed of man. If a knob goes home to Mommy because someone spits into his mouth after a substandard floor sweeping or because he is forced to exercise in a scalding-hot shower until he throws up, so much the better. The Citadel prunes the weak limbs from its mighty, 153-year-old oak. Faulkner was actually the 25th freshman to leave the school during this year’s hell week. Conroy calls The Citadel “Charleston’s shrine to Southern masculinity.” He says he’s especially surprised that black cadets, who faced similar isolation when they integrated the corps in 1966, didn’t offer to help. “I talked to some of them there, but they told me this was different,” Conroy says. “It’s not different to me. They’ve made Shannon Faulkner the ’nigger’ of the ’90s.”
So the shrine still stands–at least for now. The Supreme Court is expected to decide whether The Citadel (and the only other state-supported all-male school, VMI) can offer a separate-but-equal, all-female program at Converse College, 190 miles away, or must admit women outright. Although the woman who launched the lawsuit can no longer stand to benefit by it, Faulkner stands by her record. “When the VP came to get me, he told me I could leave out the back door to avoid reporters. I told him that I would walk out the way I came in, with my head held high,” she says. But Faulkner is less certain about her future, though she says she’d still consider a military career. “I have no earthly idea what I’m going to do now,” she said before leaving the campus. “I know my life is going to be miserable right now for a while.”
I did really well Monday morning, doing everything they ordered me to and keeping up. Then in the afternoon I got nauseated. I don’t know why–it could have been the smell of the food. When I got sick during lunch, I lost all the water that was in me. Once I was feeling better, I went back to join the company.
Then I started to get signs of heatstroke, like cold sweats, erratic breathing. So they took me back to the infirmary. That’s when I couldn’t keep anything down, not even water. I got so sick. They tried to get an IV in me but my veins had collapsed. The next day they tried again, and by luck got a vein to work. During Tuesday and Wednesday I stayed in bed hooked up to an IV. I had to have help walking to the bathroom. They finally decided to try me on food on Wednesday. They gave me grits. I threw up the grits and then lunch, which was chicken soup. They said this had to be caused by something other than a physical condition. They said it was stress.
I was in so much pain. The time that was passing was affecting me. It was isolating me more and more from the guys and causing more and more pressure to get back out there. They brought in a counselor to talk about stress management. She said I had directed my stress toward my stomach and she was trying to help me redirect my stress to another part of my body like my muscles and bones. [Giggling].
I was all set to go back on Friday morning but I woke up at I a.m. with heartburn and nausea. I couldn’t sleep. At 7:80, I went in for breakfast with the other cadets and ate a little scrambled eggs. Within two minutes of leaving the [mess], I had thrown them up. While I was getting sick, I decided my health was more important than going through with this.
In the car home, I felt bad–but a big sense of relief. I had made the decision, I had followed through what I felt. I couldn’t do it for other people. This is my time to mend and heal. People don’t know how much hell I’ve been through.
When the [Citadel official] told me that I could leave out the back door to avoid reporters, I told him that I would walk out the way I came in, with my head held high.
Physically, I was ready. I did not fail in any way. I can run the two miles in 18 minutes and 54 seconds, do 18 push-ups in two minutes and do 50 sit-ups in two minutes. That was no problem. I did lose weight from working out. I wasn’t on any crazy liquid diet or anything like that. This past week I’ve also lost an additional six or seven pounds.
The stuff I was getting from The Citadel I can handle. If you see it as a mind game, you’ll be fine. Basically, you act like you’re stupid and that they’re teaching you everything. I was doing that.
I never went to any professionals or tried to get any help. I probably seemed emotionally drained the week before I went. But, in the longer term, it was so well bottled up inside me that no one had any idea what was coming–including me. Even if just one female had been there with me, there would have been someone to share it with, making it easier.
Right now, anything’s a possibility. The military is still an option. But I think what I did was emotionally too much for one person–for someone who started when they were 18 years old. And I was so naive. I still am in some ways.
