Citadel Selling Stock To Pay Legal Costs

The Citadel’s costly fight to keep women out of its corps of cadets has forced the military school to sell off most of the stock donated to it by television mogul Ted Turner.

The Citadel Board of Visitors, the state-supported school’s governing body, voted to transfer enough stock to The Citadel Development Foundation to repay the private organization $1.5 million, The (Charleston) Post and Courier reported Saturday.

The Citadel promised to repay that amount when the foundation gave Converse College $5 million in June to set up a separate women’s leadership program. Citadel officials want the court to approve that program as an equivalent to the corps.

Turner, head of Turner Broadcasting System and the father of three Citadel graduates, pledged $25 million to the school last year. It has received $5 million, with the rest in a charitable trust to be distributed after Turner’s death.

The Citadel has paid about $2.7 million in attorney fees and costs to defend its all-male admissions policy, mostly in the cases of Shannon Faulkner and Nancy Mellette.