Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam plans to speak next week at a place where he’s been under attack for much of the past year: his alma mater, the Virginia Military Institute.
Northam (D), who graduated from VMI in 1981 and infuriated many students and alumni by ordering an investigation last year into racism there, is scheduled to deliver a private speech to the 1,700-student Corps of Cadets on Monday night in the school’s basketball arena.
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His visit to the nation’s oldest state-supported military college comes at a precarious time for reform at VMI, which was criticized for a “racist and sexist culture” and fierce resistance to change by the Northam-sponsored investigators.
What Northam’s Black VMI schoolmates endured 40 years ago: ‘We don’t want you here’
The push by Northam and others to reform the school was expected by supporters to be passed on to another Democrat, former governor Terry McAuliffe. But the upset victory on Election Day by Republican Glenn Youngkin, a former private equity executive, has muddled expectations about VMI’s path forward.
Some VMI alumni worry Youngkin — who, on the campaign trail, challenged how race and racism are taught in public schools — could slow or roll back progress at the 182-year-old Lexington campus. But other graduates and cadets, furious at what they regard as Northam’s rush to judgment, are eager to see whether Youngkin and newly resurgent Republicans in the state legislature will free VMI from government scrutiny and allow it to run itself more independently.
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“My impression is that VMI has gotten the bum deal, and I think a lot of that has to do with the current governor. And, with the new governor, hopefully things will change,” said Matt Daniel, a VMI graduate and chair of the Spirit of VMI, a political action committee launched earlier this year whose supporters have seethed over the investigation and the school’s reforms as needless. “VMI was under attack for the better part of a year and a half, and we’re hoping that doesn’t happen because of the change in the balance of power.”
VMI, whose cadets fought and died for the Confederacy, has long struggled with allegations of racism. It wasn’t until 1968 that VMI racially integrated, admitting five Black students. VMI accepted women in 1997, but only after pressure from a Supreme Court decision.
More tectonic shifts occurred last year. In October 2020, The Washington Post published an article chronicling student accounts of bigotry and racial insensitivity. Days later, Northam ordered the investigation, and the school’s longtime superintendent, retired four-star Gen. J.H. Binford Peay III, resigned.
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At VMI, Black cadets endure lynching threats, Klan memories and Confederacy veneration
He was quickly replaced by the college’s first-ever Black leader, retired Army Maj. Gen. Cedric T. Wins, a member of VMI’s Class of 1985. VMI also removed a 108-year-old statue of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson, which stood right outside the student barracks on the campus’s parade ground.
Finally, in June, the state-ordered investigation found that institutional racism and sexism are “present, tolerated and left unaddressed at VMI.” The report, conducted by the law firm Barnes & Thornburg, called for the school to file quarterly reports to the General Assembly on its progress related to diversity and inclusion initiatives.
Since then, VMI has been remaking itself.
It created a plaza on the campus’s parade ground honoring its most famous alumni, Gen. George Marshall, relocating flags that once centered the Jackson statue to instead frame a statue of the former World War II hero and statesman. The redesign cost more than a half-million dollars. The school also plans to enhance its memorial to Jonathan Daniels, VMI’s valedictorian from the Class of 1961, who was fatally shot four years later while protecting a Black teenager on her way into a store in Alabama.
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The college’s senior leadership is also changing. In July, Lt. Col. Jamica Love began work as VMI’s first-ever chief diversity officer and senior-most Black female administrator, reporting directly to the superintendent.
VMI, which received $21.6 million in state funding for the 2021-22 academic year, is asking the legislature for about $6 million more for fiscal 2022-23 to help implement recommendations from the Barnes & Thornburg report. The money would pay for Love’s position, plus three new others in Love’s office, including a deputy chief diversity officer.
The money would also go toward a deputy Title IX coordinator; three admissions counselors focused on the recruitment of underrepresented populations; and an ongoing effort to “re-contextualize” Confederate monuments and memorials, rename buildings and “rebrand all marketing materials and websites to be more inclusive and welcoming,” according to the school’s budget request.
Students, faculty and alumni who support those changes are worried Youngkin could undermine VMI’s progress.
“My greatest worry is that statue of Stonewall Jackson coming back,” said Shah Rahman, a VMI graduate and one of the college’s most vocal alumni in favor of the reforms. “VMI can be looked at as an extension of Youngkin’s debates about critical race theory. He might think that all these changes at VMI need to be eliminated and that the school needs to be brought to the way it was before.”
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In April, Youngkin gave an interview to Daniel, the chair of the Spirit of VMI, in which he appeared to take a swipe at the state-ordered investigation. Asked how he would “correct” the “extremely harmful” actions of Northam, Youngkin said:
“I think this is one of the big mistakes that leaders make is they actually think that it’s their job to make a quick decision, as opposed to step back and actually listen to the experts, to listen to those that know the institution the best and then to understand how to move forward in a way that actually reestablishes and supports the tremendous reputation and the tremendous institution that VMI is. .？.？. Because I think good leaders actually understand what they don’t know. And bad leaders always try to fill in the holes and make things up along the way.”
Youngkin said in the interview that the “very first thing” he would do as governor in regard to VMI would be to assemble a group of alumni and cadets to hear their views on “how best to reestablish the great reputation of VMI.” And he said he was willing to veto budgets that don’t provide VMI with adequate funding, which some Democrats had threatened if VMI resisted reforms.
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On Wednesday, The Post asked the governor-elect for an interview and sent him questions, but through a spokesman, Youngkin declined the request.
Daniel said his PAC, which contributed $25,000 to Youngkin’s campaign, has not yet drawn up a wish list of proposals for the new governor.
Asked whether the PAC would lobby for the return of the Jackson statue to campus through Youngkin, Daniel said it wasn’t on the group’s agenda.
“I don’t even know if you can turn back the clock,” he said. “But what we want to do is stop any further harm, at least for now.”
In the war for VMI’s future, some powerful alumni resist change while others demand it
Instead, Daniel said, the PAC is focused on helping raise money for state senatorial candidates for the 2022 election who are respectful of VMI’s traditions. Typically, he said, those politicians tend to be Republicans, “who we have found to be friendly toward VMI and its history” and who will “not meddle with VMI’s business.”
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Rahman, a member of VMI’s Class of 1997, said the PAC doesn’t represent the interests of the entire VMI community. “Their use of the letters — V, M, I — is misleading,” he said. “It’s just wrong.”
He said he fears the PAC will push Youngkin to appoint more politically conservative VMI graduates to the college’s powerful Board of Visitors.
Daniel said that’s precisely what he hopes will happen.
“I hope that when people rotate off the board, we put — or, not ‘we put’ — but the governor appoints people who are advocates and think the same way he does about VMI on the Board of Visitors,” Daniel said.
The day after Youngkin won, Spirit of VMI supporters went on to the group’s Facebook page to celebrate — and pounce.
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“Great job,” wrote one person whose profile said he studied economics at VMI. “Time to eliminate some of the ‘woke’ hires of the last administration.”
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One alumni lashed out at Love, the new chief diversity officer.
“Now let’s work on getting Youngkin to remove the Democratic stain on VMI and to restore our good name,” one alumni replied. “And how about getting rid of the political kommissar, Love.”
In an interview, Virginia Sen. Janet D. Howell (D-Fairfax), chairwoman of the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee, praised Wins, VMI’s new superintendent, but warned the school about backpedaling.
“Were VMI to do that, that would be a shot across the bow at the Senate,” she said.
Bill Wyatt, VMI’s spokesman, pointed to Wins’s “One Corps-One VMI” plan, which was unveiled this spring and calls for advancing the college’s experience, traditions and culture to be “more positive and inclusive” and “producing leaders prepared for the complex world we live in today and into the future.”
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“General Wins is definitely very ambitious. He’s very invested in VMI. .？.？. He is not afraid to come in and shake things up and make decisions and move the ball forward,” Wyatt said. “I think that it would be silly for the past 18 months, going through a leadership change and a new plan, I think it would be silly to roll all that back just because of the results of an election.”
On Thursday, after Wyatt emailed the VMI community saying that Northam requested the opportunity to speak, students went on Jodel, an anonymous social media app popular on campus, and fumed.
For more than a year, they have complained that Northam had no right accusing the school of systemic racism after it was revealed in 2019 that his medical school yearbook contained a photo of one person dressed in blackface and another in a Ku Klux Klan outfit; and, that his senior-year VMI yearbook listed one of his nicknames as “coonman,” a racial slur.
Northam initially said he was in the photo, but not which person, then he said he wasn’t in the image. He said that two people at VMI called him “coonman,” but he didn’t know why and expressed regret.
“He is the catalyst for all this new bull----. Don’t go to the speech,” wrote one cadet in a post that got 55 “upvotes” as of Thursday night.
“Hopefully he takes questions so I can ask him why he did blackface,” wrote one Jodel user who identified as a Black student.
In an interview, one upperclass student said cadets are “embarrassed” by Northam.
“For the most part, everyone that I’ve talked to agreed that the investigation was necessary and action needs to happen for the school to move forward,” said the student, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. “But, as a collective, he’s unpopular among cadets. .？.？. As an alum, he could have done so much else to lift up the school, and he failed to do that.”