The superintendent of the nation’s oldest state-supported military college sought to calm student nerves in an emergency address as Virginia lawmakers began discussing a measurethat could put funding for the school at risk.
Virginia Military Institute Superintendent David Furness vowed to cadets Thursday night that he would show lawmakers and Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) the college has unique value to the state, according to a recording of the address obtained by The Washington Post.
He urged cadets to weigh in on the proposed bill — which cleared a legislative subcommittee Friday — but to be careful in their language.
“We do not need any more enemies,” Furness, a retired lieutenant general in the Marines, told cadets Thursday. “There are lots of people out there that do not understand us and do not value the type of educational experience that you are putting yourself through faithfully every day.”
State Democrats proposeda bill earlier this week that would establish a task force to review VMI’s state funding, including seeing how the institute has addressed a 2021 state report that found widespread discrimination at the school. VMI receives 27.5 percent of its budget from the state.
The task force proposal, along with another that would place the school under the governing board of another Virginia university, sparked fury and anxiety among cadets and alumni, who worried the future of their university was in jeopardy.
Online and in private, some cadets said they were considering transferring. One cadet commented on an Instagram post of one of the bill’s sponsors, Del. Dan Helmer (D-Fairfax), that VMI had greatly enriched her life.
Amber Strapponi, who commented on Helmer’s post, said in an interview Friday that her cohort at VMI has “potentially been the closest family in my life” and given her a sense of belonging. “It’s nerve-wracking seeing lawmakers make decisions about a school they may or may not know a lot about,” she said.
Spanberger and other Virginia Democrats have taken several actionsrecently targeting colleges in the commonwealth — many aimed at reversing moves enacted under former governor Glenn Youngkin (R) and other conservatives to cut out diversity-related initiatives.
Among her first actions in office, Spanberger appointed five members to the VMI board. They included former Democratic governor Ralph Northam, an alumnus of the military institute in Lexington who had ordered the investigationinto VMI’s culture. She also included VMI cadets, including a band, in her inauguration parade.
Spanberger’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the proposed VMI task force.
Helmer, who sponsored the bill, said lawmakers wanted to review if VMI had sufficiently cut ties to the Confederacy. The military institute long memorialized cadets who fought and died for the South in the Civil War and others in the Confederacy. A statue of former VMI professor and Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson once stood on the campus, but was removedafter a 2020 reportin The Post about racism at the military school.
If passed, the proposed task force would review whether VMI had properly addressed its history of racism and sexism, Helmer said.
On Friday, Jeremiah Woods, a Black cadet who left the school, described incidents of racism there and expressed his support of the bill during a House of Delegates subcommittee meeting.
Furness also testified at the hearing. He defended the institute, saying it was no longer an institution committed to glorifying the Confederacy.
“That may have been true of the VMI of the past,” he told lawmakers. “It is not now, nor will it be in the future.”
Supporters of the school say it has responded to the majority of issues brought up in the state-ordered investigation. In his address to cadets, Furness said the school needed to do a better job of showing it had addressed 34 of 38 recommendations and would keep working on others. He said that while VMI was not without its problems, he disagreed that it was a sexist and racist institution.
Furness, a VMI alumnus, told cadets that its honor and discipline system, among other core tenets, were foundational and most important for the school to keep intact.
“If we protected all those, we’ve protected VMI,” he said. “I’m not so concerned what name’s on the building, I’m not concerned about statues and portraits and whatnot. And if I had to move those off, get rid of that to move forward, I would, to protect what’s the core values of VMI.”
He also asked students to stay off Jodel, an anonymous messaging app where cadets have previously postedracist and sexist comments, and to trust him and the institute to persuade lawmakers VMI is valuable to the state.
“Worry about what you can control,” he said, noting the school must improve its reputation and that state delegates were watching Jodel.
“America right now is divided and at each other’s throats, and too many people are screaming and not listening,” Furness said. “Here, with this common experience, what I’m asking you to do is be kind to each other.”
Furness was hired to lead VMI last year after the institute’s governing board voted not to extend the contract of retired Army Maj. Gen. Cedric T. Wins, the school’s first Black superintendent. Supporters of Wins sawthe move as a partisan effort to unwind his diversity, equity and inclusion policies, while some detractors said his departure would allow the school to focus more on developing cadets without spending time on DEI trainings.
VMI has a network of influential alumni that include Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
This week, the institute quickly began mobilizing that base against the resolution.
In a Friday note to the VMI community ahead of the subcommittee meeting in the Virginia, Furness encouraged recipients to send legislators comments on the two VMI bills. Echoing his request to cadets, he asked those who do submit comments to be respectful and refrain from criticism, according to the email obtained by The Post.
Later, in a statement, Furness said the proposals raised “fundamental questions” about VMI’s future, and that cadets respectfully sharing positive stories will help “weather this storm.”
By Friday midday, there were already dozens of comments on the bill.
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