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And not only do we have that for students, we have academic advisors who are then assigned to each company in the battalion, and so they are familiar with each company's academic officer. And, of course, we also have a required evening study period from 7:00 o'clock until 10:30 where you have to be accounted for somewhere. You can sign out and go to the library. You can sign out to go to one of the study halls. But you're only allowed to go out in town if you've received special privileges based upon academic performance in the previous semester.
Q. Thank you.
THE CHAIRMAN: Any other questions? Senator Giese.
SENATOR GIESE: Mr. Chairman.
EXAMINATION BY SENATOR GIESE:
Q. Is there anything in your recent record that would indicate you've had any problems with the law?
A. With the law? No, sir. Not at all.
Q. Any kind of judgments or - I can't be more specific than that, but -
THE CHAIRMAN: That'd be civil.
Q. Civil. Any kind of - anything that has to do with the criminal code? I'm not a lawyer, so I can't - any arrests or appearances before a court?
A. On the criminal side, sir?
Q. With a criminal -
A. Of course not, no, sir. Not at all. Now, if you'd like me to explain what you might be referring to.
Q. Please.
A. About two years ago, I was inaccurately named as part of an investigation by the State's Securities office. I was not involved in that at all, and it was made very clear, and I've got copies that exonerate me totally from that. But I was no where near involved.

What happened was I referred a client to an individual. I had nothing to do with any of the thing and what happened was the - this individual unbeknownst to me was under investigation by the Secretary of State's office, and I was offered a cease and desist in the securities transaction.

By the time I hired my counsel to get the thing straightened out, it was two weeks later. It cost me a couple thousand dollars, and I was totally exonerated, and I can prove that if need be.
Q. But that's the basis -
A. That's the only thing.
Q. Is that a civil or is that a criminal?
A. I have no idea what it was. I guess it would be - it's not criminal I know. But -
THE CHAIRMAN: That would have been criminal had he been found guilty.
A. Had I been even named, but, you know, when they order - they issue a cease and desist telling you not to do something, well, if you're not doing it, then there's no reason to worry about not doing something you're not doing.
Q. But a cease and desist - again, you lawyers help me - what does that mean?
A. It means -
Q. Cease and desist doing what?
A. Well, when I met with Mr. Miles it was "stop it," and I said, "Well, I never did it." "I know, we'll get it straightened out," and they did.
THE CHAIRMAN: I might say for the committee's information that the SLED background check shows no convictions there.
SENATOR GIESE: No convictions.
THE CHAIRMAN: He has no record, yes, sir. That's criminal.
A. And I might reiterate, too, that what we're talking about, sir, was purely, purely administrative in nature and it - I mean, I did not even - it was - it took me about ten days to get the thing straightened out with the Secretary of State's office.
THE CHAIRMAN: Further, the Charleston Clerk of Court records shows he has a judgment.
A. That is correct, sir. I am arguing that judgment with a contractor who performed services on my home.
THE CHAIRMAN: Lee Building Products for $14,000?
A. That's exactly right, sir. That's exactly right.
Q. Got a judgment against him?
A. That's a judgement against him that the building services is trying to get me to pay. I did not even know that judgment existed until I did the

But nonetheless we have authorized our legal counsel to do whatever he felt we needed to do within the letter of the law. We have appealed it now to the Fourth Circuit. It's been given back to the District Court to come up with a parallel program. We will do whatever we are told to do and whatever the final decision is, is what we will uphold.
Q. Could you relate more to first person than the board -
A. My experience.
Q. - as a whole?
A. The board as a whole, my experience, sir?
Q. Yes. Yes, your feelings.
A. My feelings on it is I support diversity in education, and I don't think that the state should make every school for everything all the time. I think that we have certain situations where I want equal opportunity, but by the same token, I also think that the stand that we are taking in the seeking of diversity of the education I think is a very modernistic approach to education. And I support that.
Q. Thank you, sir.
REPRESENTATIVE LITTLEJOHN: Mr. Chairman.
THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Littlejohn.
EXAMINATION BY REPRESENTATIVE LITTLEJOHN:
Q. Are you telling us that you favor women in the corps then, Mr. Peper?
A. Personally, I do not, sir. I favor the existing admissions practice, and I have voted for that as it's on the record. However, I will state that

I'm not in the retired state. I'm still an active business man. But more importantly than that is I am also a field grade officer in the United States Marine Corps Reserves, and I am the only member on the board that's presently in the Reserves, and I do a lot of work with the ROTC programs as far as advising them, which courses they need to be taking to prepare to go to flight school as I did and - and other educational opportunities.

Going back to the funding, I might throw in that I attended the Citadel on a full ROTC scholarship, three and a half years. But I was also able to work a paper route. I delivered The Post and Courier for my four years there.

But I think when you go back to the funding, Mr. Inabinett, I think we need to stop cutting. I think we just - the cutting is cut. There ain't more cutting to be there. What we need to do is find out where we're going to get more money to pay for this education. I think what we ought to be doing is looking at alternative sources of revenue earmarked for education as opposed to keep trying to figure how we're going to get by on a percentage formula.
Q. Your service as - during your time as a member of the Board of Visitors, have there been any incidences on campus that may have brought your services in question?
A. No, ma'am. Not at all.
THE CHAIRMAN: Any other questions.
SENATOR GLOVER: Yes. One other on the affirmative action.
Q. Looking at South Carolina and with the information that you just stated on our need for resources and other sources of revenue in this

There is a need in this state for us to come into the 21st century realizing that multicultural education, diversity is the way for the 21st century. Bearing that in mind, and with your stance for single gender education -
A. Yes, ma'am.
Q. - what about -
A. I'm going to tell you, I'm very proud of the Citadel board as a collective group, but I'm going to also commend the candidates I've seen today for the South Carolina State board, I've been very impressed. And I could tell you if my service is fortunate to be reelected, the first thing I'm going to do is recommend our president that we have a joint trustee meeting with the Citadel Board and South Carolina State trustees. I've seen some individuals here I think we could really learn some things from today. So I'd like to commend them.

Regarding affirmative action at the Citadel, I don't think anybody is happy where they are. I think everyone is always striving for more. As I tell my son, there's two kinds of people in this world, there's givers and takers, and there's no in between, you're either one or the other, and that's all there is to it. And giving back to the Citadel is my goal.

Going back to the affirmative action question, what I really think, and we're stressing this with our foundation department presently, is that in our recruitment, we specifically are trying to recruit minority African-American professors. Unfortunately, so is everyone else. And there are a lot of schools that are able to pay more than we are.

And one of the things that we're looking at is an added stipend for filling some of those positions. And, so I can't say that - I want equal for everybody. And I'm very proud of our school and I'm proud of what we've done. Should we be satisfied? No, ma'am, we should not be. We should always be striving for better.
THE CHAIRMAN: Any others? Thank you, Colonel. Next we have Dennis J. Rhoad.
DENNIS J. RHOAD, having been duly sworn, testified as follows:
MR. RHOAD - EXAMINATION BY THE CHAIRMAN:
Q. Mr. Rhoad, do you have any health related problems that the screening committee should be made aware of that would prevent you from serving on the board in a full capacity?
A. No, sir, I don't.
Q. Considering your present occupation or other activities, would you be able to attend board meetings on a regular basis?

I think that a lot of professors spend too much time pursuing their scholarly publication goals and what have you, and as a result of that, I think the emphasis is away from the classroom. And when you have a small student-professor ratio, it's critically important that the classroom be the focus. And I think that a lot of students who might ordinarily be average or mediocre will try even harder and pursue graduation goals even more fiercely if there's a feeling of the professor wants that, wants that graduation. I think that that's one of the things that the Citadel could improve on. Other schools as well.
Q. Thank you.
THE CHAIRMAN: Any other questions? Senator Giese.
EXAMINATION BY SENATOR GIESE:
Q. You made an interesting point about teaching which I certainly agree with you a hundred percent, it should be emphasized more at the college level. Does the Citadel have kind of graduate assistant kind of thing that we have at the university where freshmen and sophomore years you're fortunate if you get a real live fully paid professor teaching you? Do they have graduate students doing some teaching?
A. No, sir, not at the Citadel. They have some adjunct professors such as myself, but there are no Citadel graduate students teaching in the liberal

If this proposed legislation that I've been reading about is passed, as a lawyer if I was on the board, I would try to look at the law and determine if the Citadel can continue to restrict as a requirement of attending the use of a weapon or the carrying of a weapon. And if they could do so constitutionally, I'd be in favor of continuing that policy. I don't think it's a good idea to have, you know, weapons on campus. I don't even believe a Citadel cadet can without violating the Citadel's rules, and I believe it's possibly an expulsion offense, carry a handgun in his glove compartment even though South Carolina law allows that.
Q. Thank you, sir.
THE CHAIRMAN: Senator Glover.
SENATOR GLOVER: Thank you.
EXAMINATION BY MR. RHOAD:
Q. Mr. Rhoad, why do you want to serve on the Board of Visitors?
A. Well, there are several reasons, Senator Glover. I'm young, and I have a wife and one child and another one on the way, and I think that now is a good time for me when I'm active in civic groups and I'm active in my law practice to serve on the Citadel Board of Visitors. I'm not so far removed from having attended the Citadel that I think that gives me some insight perhaps some of the older members on the board don't have.

And in addition to that, the Citadel needs young bright leadership, just like all colleges do, and I'd like to serve my alma mater and lend to them, you know, my experience and my education and my service.

I think that we could perhaps look at the institution now as well as other institutions and perhaps the people serving those institutions that don't have the same qualifications as someone else might have, I think that an opportunity for someone to excel based upon, you know, one's merit should not be denied anyone at all.
Q. What are your personal feelings on the Shannon Faulkner situation? How do you feel about the Citadel and the acceptance of Ms. Faulkner?
A. You're asking my personal feeling? It's interesting that you asked us that because two years ago I ran into the current chairman of the board at the Citadel and he said, "Did you wife have the baby?" And I said yes. He said, "Great." I said, "Well, it's the class of 2018" or whatever. And he said "Oh, you had a son." And I said, "No, I had a daughter." And so he laughed and I laughed.

However, personally, having graduated from the Citadel and having seen the success rate and successes of the Citadel, I personally believe that the small, single gender environment would be changed dramatically and because of that, I'm not in favor of Ms. Faulkner attending the Citadel. However, as an adjunct professor teaching constitutional law, I'm a bit surprised by the Fourth Circuit's Court of Opinion. In fact, I thought they would probably say, you know, to the Citadel you need to admit Ms. Faulkner. And if, of course, that happened, I'm sure as a board member, I would as the other board members follow the court's order.

What the court's done now though is they've put us in a situation obviously where they've said okay, you can either admit Ms. Faulkner or you can try to come up with a parallel program, whatever that may be. But personally, I would be in favor of it remaining the way it is, single gender because I've done some research in the - into the empirical study about single gender education, and it is a fact that - I mean an undisputed fact regardless of what side of the constitutional issue you fall, that single gender education, you know, has great returns and great merits and I'm afraid that, you know, we'd lose some of that. It's not personal against Ms. Faulkner. It would be the changing of the single gender nature.
Q. So your firstborn is now out of her Citadel education?
A. Well, now, you didn't ask me that question.
Q. No, you mentioned it. I just wanted to know.

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