VMI Rats
by James A. Bacon
Good news from the Virginia Military Institute! After seeing a drastic falloff t0 374 entering students last year, 491 students matriculated this fall. Last year’s decline capped off years of disastrous public relations stemming from a campaign by The Washington Post and the Northam administration to depict VMI as a racist, sexist institution. The Post has since redirected its venom to conservative VMI alumni, taking the heat off the institution, and Northam is history.
Last year, according to VMI officials, the administration ramped up its recruitment efforts, focusing on geographic areas with larger populations of military families and low-income or minority students. About 85.5% of this year’s cadets are men, and 14.5% are women. Interestingly, VMI did not provide a breakdown by race/ethnicity, even though achieving racial diversity has been a top priority.
Meanwhile, controversy continues to roil the military school. As Bacon’s Rebellion noted two weeks ago, Board of Visitors Chairman Thomas R. Watjen had asked VMI’s University Counsel, who reports to Attorney General Jason Miyares, to investigate allegations that VMI officials had sought negative press about The Cadet, the independent student newspaper that has been a thorn in the side of Superintendent Cedric Wins and his administration. But now, reports Cardinal News, Watjen says VMI “will handle the matter internally.”
Wrote Watjens in an update to his original statement: “After further consideration, we have chosen to handle this matter in the normal course of business, and I am discussing with [Superintendent] Maj. Gen. Wins his plans for doing so.”
VMI spokesperson Bill Wyatt told Cardinal News that “a number of factors led to the decision to handle the matter internally,” but he provided no details.
The Cadet Foundation, which is funded by independent alumni to support the student newspaper, is calling in a petition for an “open, transparent, impartial, and equitable review/investigation” into what it calls a deliberate effort to shut down the student newspaper, which had been given a top public-service award by the Virginia Press Association.
