By Avalon Pernell, Tyler Palicia and Simona Radeva
The last time Virginia Military Institute cadets were called to leave its 134 acres in Lexington, Va., to fight as a unit was in 1864, when more than 250 cadets joined Confederate forces in the Battle of New Market during the Civil War.
Cadets have not fought as a unit in a domestic war since, but they now find themselves in the middle of a different kind of conflict. Today, VMI is one of the battlegrounds in the culture war over the term DEI, the abbreviation for diversity, equity and inclusion. The word equity, in particular, is drawing the most fire.
“DEI is dead,” said Martin D. Brown, Virginia’s chief diversity officer, when he spoke to VMI employees in April 2023 as the featured speaker for VMI’s annual inclusive excellence training program.
“We need VMI more than ever,” he said. “In a way you’re at the tip of the spear in this culture war.”
VMI was in the spotlight long before Brown’s speech.
In October 2020, the Washington Post reported that Black cadets faced “relentless racism” at the Institute. Two days later, then-Gov. Ralph Northam, a 1981 graduate of VMI, ordered an investigation. By the end of 2020, Barnes & Thornburg, an Indianapolis-based law firm, had begun an investigation.
The scrutiny seems to have taken a toll. In fall 2022, VMI’s enrollment for its first-year class plummeted by nearly 25%. As of May 11, 2023, VMI had accepted 969 students out of a pool of 989 for a 97.9% acceptance rate, which is alarming to some members of its Board of Visitors.
The enrollment drop is the biggest since the 1993-1994 school year when the U.S. Supreme Court entered the fight over allowing women to attend VMI. That year, the Court kicked the case back to a lower court to come up with a solution.
The case returned to the high court, and in 1996, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in one of her most well-known opinions, wrote on behalf of a 7-1 majority that VMI could not deny women the opportunity to attend the Institute.
“‘Inherent differences’ between men and women, we have come to appreciate, remain cause for celebration, but not for denigration of the members of either sex or for artificial constraints on an individual’s opportunity.”
– Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, United States v. Virginia, June 26, 1996
VMI is the nation’s oldest state-funded military college. Since it was established in 1839, its mission has been to produce “citizen-soldiers” who are prepared for leadership roles in civilian and military life.
The Institute uses an “adversarial method” of training intended to instill physical and mental discipline through a spartan existence with a goal of building a strong moral code among individual cadets.
The Institute’s alums are passionate in their views about their alma mater’s past, present and future. In the last few years, alumni have clashed over efforts to modernize VMI’s military experience. And key administrators have become lightning rods for criticism over their efforts to make VMI more welcoming for women and students of color.
DEI is at the center of most of it—as are the more than 1,500 cadets.
Brown, an appointee of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, said the General Assembly mandated DEI programming. “But this governor has a different philosophy of civil discourse, civility, treating — living the golden rule, right?”
One of Youngkin’s first acts as governor in 2022 came in an executive order that changed the name of the state’s Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to the Office of Diversity, Opportunity and Inclusion.
As a state institution, VMI had to comply with the governor’s mandate.
dei training at vmi
In July 2021, Lt. Col. Jamica Love stepped on to post as VMI’s first chief diversity officer—and into a firestorm that erupted after the Barnes & Thornburg report found “institutional racism and sexism present, tolerated, and left unaddressed at VMI.”
Love created VMI’s first inclusive excellence training program for cadets during the 2021-2022 school year.
All 3rd, 2nd, and 1st class cadets (the equivalent of sophomore, junior and senior standing, respectively) are required to attend one hour of inclusive excellence training each year. The incoming 4th class cadets receive an hour-long training in the fall and 50 minutes in the spring.
VMI’s Board of Visitors took several steps after the Washington Post story in October 2020. The board accepted the resignation of retired Gen. J.H. Binford Peay III, who led VMI as superintendent for more than 17 years. The board also created the Institute’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Office, now known as the Diversity, Opportunity and Inclusion Office, which Love now heads.
The board named Gen. Cedric T. Wins as interim superintendent in November following Gen. Peay’s resignation. Five months later, Gen. Wins, a 1985 VMI alum, was named superintendent and the first Black leader in the Institute’s 183-year history.
The Spirit of VMI, a political action committee started by VMI alumni with conservative leanings, was one of the office’s early opponents.
Matt Daniel, a 1985 graduate who is chairman of the Spirit of VMI, said he took issue with the term “equity” because it could suggest that people receive different treatment. “From inception, Day One, when you walk in the place, it doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman. It doesn’t matter if you are white or black or if you’re Asian or Hispanic. It doesn’t matter. Everybody’s broken to the same level,” he said in an interview.
Daniel said cadets reached out to him about Love’s inclusive excellence training.
“The DEI training that was based on the oppressed-oppressor stuff and the shaming of individuals if your dad makes $250,000 a year,” he said, “that’s not necessary. What’s necessary, I think, is things they will likely see as leaders when they go out into the world.”
Love said she’s staying on mission.
“My goal is to make sure VMI is the best institution it can be. And so that’s what I’m focused on regardless of what anybody says, including in the PAC,” she said. “My job is to make sure VMI and its cadets and faculty and staff have a good experience here. And I’m not deterring from that or changing from that, not one day.”
But she faces challenges, especially with funding. Love said in an interview that she was promised a $135,000 budget for the office, not including salaries and benefits for her and her employees, when she started in July 2021. Instead, the office only got $14,000.
Love said she fought back.
“But I pushed and pushed for more,” she said. “I ended up getting $80,000, again, not including personnel salaries or anything like that. But that’s not necessarily where my budget will start off next year because it was put in as almost as an exception.”
That means she may have to fight the same battle again, Love said.
“It needs more support in funding,” she said.