RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Retired Army Maj. Gen. Cedric T. Wins will step down in June from his post as the first Black superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute after the school’s board voted against extending his contract Friday.
In a 10-6 vote, the school’s Board of Visitors, an advisory group appointed by the governor, opted out of extending Wins’ contract after meeting in a closed session shielded from the public.
The ouster of Wins, a 1985 alumnus who served more than three decades in the Army, comes in the wake of increased diversity efforts at the school in recent years after a damning report from the state — but also pushback against those efforts by some conservative alumni.
“The BOV is supremely grateful to Major General Wins for his service to the Institute during some very difficult times,” board President John Adams said Friday. “The foundation he has provided us will ensure VMI continues to fulfill its vital mission of educating future leaders.”
VMI was founded in 1839 in Lexington, a historic town in western Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. The school educated Gens. George Patton and George Marshall. It didn’t accept African Americans until 1968 or accept women until after a 1996 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
And the college did not have a Black superintendent until Wins. His leadership began around the time VMI had its own racial reckoning in 2021 with the release of the state-sanctioned report, which said VMI tolerated and failed to address institutional racism and sexism and must be held accountable for making changes.
The report found that “racial slurs and jokes are not uncommon” and “contribute to an atmosphere of hostility toward minorities.” There was an ”outdated” reverence for the Civil War and Confederacy. And a racial disparity existed among cadets who’d been dismissed by the student-run honor court. Sexual assault was also prevalent yet inadequately addressed.
“Although VMI has no explicitly racist or sexist policies that it enforces, the facts reflect an overall racist and sexist culture,” the report stated.
After the report’s release, Wins said the school was already moving toward becoming more inclusive and welcoming. Those efforts included removing a prominent statue of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson, who taught at VMI. The school also formed a committee focused on diversity, equity and inclusion, hired its first chief diversity officer, Jamica Love, and created a cadet-led cultural awareness training program.
Some students and alumni celebrated the changes, but there was also dissent.
Matt Daniel, a 1985 graduate who helped form the group, told The Associated Press in 2023 that VMI’s diversity training for cadets initially “promoted racial division and victimhood.” Daniel said the training became less divisive earlier this year and began to focus more on social problems that cadets may encounter in the military or in the business world.
That year, the school’s chief diversity officer resigned. VMI also changed the name of the office that Love ran from Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to Diversity, Opportunity, and Inclusion to match the title of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s diversity office in Richmond, The Washington Post reported.
Youngkin’s chief diversity officer, Martin Brown, also visited VMI’s campus in April to lead mandatory staff and faculty training, during which Brown said that “DEI is dead,” the Post reported.
Chatter about the future of Wins’ contract at the college has escalated in recent weeks, with Democratic Sen. Jennifer Carroll Foy, a VMI alumna, saying she was told the board no longer wanted a Black superintendent. Following that, Republican U.S. Rep. Ben Cline wrote a letter to the Virginia General Assembly clerks accusing Carroll Foy of intimidating “VMI Board members by conditioning funding on the extension of the superintendent’s contract.” On social media, the state senator called Cline’s letter “misinformation” and a “barrage of attacks.”
On Friday, Carroll Foy called the board’s decision disappointing.
“Now, hyper-partisan MAGA Republican appointees have taken over the VMI Board with their political agendas and voted to end the Superintendent’s contract by falsely labeling him as a ‘DEI hire,’” Carroll Foy said. “The core issue is that this action had nothing to do with performance or merit.”
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This story was corrected to include the first name of VMI’s former chief diversity officer, Jamica Love.
