The 4th Circuit, in turn, deferentially reviewed the state's proposal and decided that the two single-sex programs directly served Virginia's reasserted purposes : single-gender education and " achieving the results of an adversative method in a military environment ."
32.
Pp . 17-22 . ( b ) Virginia also argues that VMI's adversative method of training provides educational benefits that cannot be made available, unmodified, to women, and that alterations to accommodate women would necessarily be so drastic as to destroy VMI's program.
33.
See, e . g ., 766 F . Supp ., at 1426 ( factual findings concerning character traits produced by VMI's adversative methodology ); id ., at 1434 ( factual findings concerning benefits for many college-age men of an adversative approach in general ).
34.
See, e . g ., 766 F . Supp ., at 1426 ( factual findings concerning character traits produced by VMI's adversative methodology ); id ., at 1434 ( factual findings concerning benefits for many college-age men of an adversative approach in general ).
35.
But imparting those values in that fashion i . e ., in a military, adversative, all-male environment is the distinctive mission of VMI . And as I have discussed ( and both courts below found ), that mission is not " great enough to accommodate women ."
36.
The concurrence does not contest that there are benefits to single-sex education, and that alone suffices to make Virginia's case, since admission of a woman will even more surely put an end to VMI's single-sex education than it will to VMI's adversative methodology.
37.
Just as a State may wish to support junior colleges, vocational institutes, or a law school that emphasizes case practice instead of classroom study, so too a State's decision to maintain within its system one school that provides the adversative method is " substantially related " to its goal of good education.
38.
VMI could assimilate women, " it is equally without a doubt that VMI's present methods of training and education would have to be changed " by a " move away from its adversative new cadet system . " 766 F . Supp ., at 1413, and n . 8, 1441.
39.
The Court's opinion recognizes this, and devotes much of its opinion to demonstrating that " ` some women . . . do well under ( the ) adversative model "'and that " ( i ) t is on behalf of these women that the United States has instituted this suit ."
40.
The military component of the Mary Baldwin program comes from a pre-existing Reserve Officers Training Corps program with few of the features of VMI, which prides itself on what it calls an " adversative " program that strips cadets of their privacy and identity and refers to first-year students as " rats ."
