AMERICAN women may have breached the last bastion of male military education but they will have to wear crew cuts to get inside the doors of the Virginia Military Institution and be treated as "rats" in their first year.
The VMI, with its spartan barracks near Lexington, Virginia, has trained only male military cadets since it was founded in 1839 to create citizen soldiers to defend the state. But the Supreme Court ruled last June that if the VMI continues to receive $10 million (£6.25 million) annual state funding it must admit women.
Efforts by the academy, which has 1,300 cadets, to raise enough money to go private and keep up the ban on women recruits have failed and it must accept females from next year. But it will do so without lowering its tough physical standards and spartan conditions.
The VMI will insist on women having their hair cut to within a half inch of their scalps - a buzz cut. They will also have to endure the psychological battering of the notorious "rat line" where first year recruits have their spirits crushed by bullying and abuse by older cadets so that they can be built up again to conform to military standards.
The VMI Superintendent, Mr Josiah Bunting, said that the females would also have to pass the same physical tests as males which include six pull ups, 60 sit ups in two minutes and running 1 1/2 miles in 12 minutes.
The only concessions will be separate toilet and shower facilities and the installation of blinds, to be drawn only when cadets are dressing.
Other military academies which have accepted women such as West Point have adopted separate fitness standards to allow for physiological differences and have allowed women to wear their hair longer than men. But the VMI says it will not adopt a dual standard in these matters and cites the Supreme Court ruling which said that the VMI's harsh physical and mental treatment of cadets is "not inherently unsuitable to women".
Mr Bunting said the changes will be minimal to accommodate the needs of physical dignity so as to preserve the essence of the VMI system. "We teach what are called the vigorous virtues - determination, self reliance, self control and courage. This is achieved through the application of mental stress, physical rigour, minute regulations of behaviour, pressures, hazards and psychological bonding."
Asked if the first year "rats" could date each other, Mr Bunting replied: "Rats don't have time to date anybody".
A sports shop in Lexington which has been selling "Better Dead than Co Ed" T shirts for years, has now produced a new one showing a snarling, booted senior VMI cadet towering over a scrawny young woman who asks in a thought bubble: "I won this?" About 80 women have indicated they want to enrol.