VIRGINIA MILITARY INSTITUTE

A roundup of news from across the nation.

The Virginia Military Institute will change its student-run honor court to make it more fair to cadets as part of a response to a state-ordered investigation into racism and sexism. The Washington Post reports VMI detailed the reforms in a progress report Friday, Feb. 4, 2022. Those initiatives included mandatory diversity, equity, and inclusion training for administrators and members of VMI's Board of Visitors, and changes to the Lexington school's one-strike-and-you're-out honor court system. Twelve out of the 28 VMI students dismissed in those three academic years were Black. All of the new honor court changes will go into effect in August 2022, at the beginning of the next academic year.

The Virginia Military Institute will change its student-run honor court to make it more fair to cadets as part of a response to a state-ordered investigation into racism and sexism.

Getty Images/Justin Sullivan.In mid-May, rising senior Kasey Meredith made headlines when she officially became the first female regimental commander in the Virginia Military Institute’s 182-year-old history.But the top honor was marred by a cruel, sexist online campaign by fellow students who accused officials at the military college of choosing her as “a publicity stunt” after state-appointed investigators began examining racism and sexism at the school, which didn’t become co-ed until 1997.“L

Virginia Military Institute FILE - Crews lift a statue of Confederate Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson from its pedestal on the campus of the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Va., in this Dec. 7, 2020, file photo. The findings of a months-long investigation into racism at the nearly two-century old Virginia Military Institute will be released Tuesday, June 12, 2021, according to the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. (AP Photo/Sarah Rankin, File) (Sarah Rankin)The Virginia Military Institute has tolerated and failed to address institutional racism and sexism and must be held accountable for making changes, according to a state-sanctioned report released Tuesday. A racial disparity also exists among cadets who have been dismissed by the school’s student-run honor court, the report stated. An interim report released in March documented responses from students, faculty and alumni about witnessing or experiencing racism and sexism.

A state-sanctioned report says the Virginia Military Institute has tolerated and failed to address institutional racism and sexism and must be held accountable for making changes.

Crews prepare to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson from the campus of the Virginia Military Institute on Monday, Dec. 7, 2020, in Lexington, Va. (AP Photo/Sarah Rankin)LEXINGTON, Va. – The Virginia Military Institute removed a prominent statue of Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson on Monday, a project initiated this fall after allegations of systemic racism roiled the public college. But “VMI does not define itself by this statue and that is why this move is appropriate,” he added. VMI said the statue will be relocated to a nearby Civil War museum at a battlefield where dozens of VMI cadets were killed or wounded. But he said it would not remove the statue of Jackson, who owned enslaved people, or rethink the names of buildings honoring Confederate leaders. In 2015, VMI did away with requiring freshmen to salute the statue each time they passed it, Wyatt said.

The Virginia Military Institute has removed the statue of Confederate general Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson from campus after allegations of racial injustice and discrimination rocked the campus this year. "We are defined by our unique system of education and the quality and character of the graduates the Institute produces. A statue of Confederate leader Stonewall Jackson is removed from the Virginia Military Institute. WDBJThe removal of the Jackson statue comes as VMI, the nation's oldest state-run military college, continues to wrestle with accusations of racial injustice. The school's former superintendent, General J.H Binford Peay III, resigned after Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, an alumnus of the school, ordered an investigation into the allegations of racism at the college.