After claims of racial inequality and bigotry circulated the campus this year, the Virginia Military Institute removed the statue of Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson from campus.
“VMI does not define itself by this statue and that is why this move is appropriate,” said interim superintendent Cedric Wins, a retired Army Major General, in a statement on Monday.
“We are defined by our unique system of education and the quality and character of the graduates the Institute produces. Our graduates embody the values of honor, respect, civility, self-discipline, and professionalism. This is how we will continue to be defined,” he added.
First-year cadets used to be expected to salute Jackson’s statue, a practice that was suspended in 2015 after students started objecting to the “heavy focus” of the school on the role of the Confederacy in the Civil War.
VMI announced it would be relocated to the Virginia Museum of the Civil War and New Market Battlefield State Historical Park, despite previously announcing that the statue would not be demolished.
Removing the statue would cost the school $209,000, which will come out of the repair and facilities account of the school’s facility.
The construction of the statue at the Civil War Virginia Museum is scheduled to be finished by the fall of 2021.
The demolition of the statue of Jackson comes as VMI, the oldest state-run military college in the country continues to deal with allegations of racial discrimination.
In the Washington Post, an October article outlined claims of racism from college black cadets. According to the Post, many Black students felt unheard, surrounded by Confederate monuments and reenactments, and had been exposed to repeated acts of racism from fellow students and teachers.
After Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, an alumnus of the school, ordered an investigation into the claims of racism at the college, the school’s former superintendent, General J.H Binford Peay III, resigned. Peay, who held the job for 17 years earlier justified the decision not to remove Jackson’s statue by citing the “direct ties” of the institution to the general who taught at the academy.
Three days after Peay’s resignation, the Board of Directors of the school ordered the demolition of the statue.
Wins, a VMI graduate from Black in 1984, was named as interim superintendent and will continue to serve until the appointment of a permanent superintendent.
In addition to removing the Jackson statue, the VMI Board of Visitors is committed to the selection of a permanent diversity officer, the establishment of a permanent diversity and inclusion committee on the Board of Visitors, the creation of “diversity initiatives to include a focus on gender” and the introduction of new hiring practices and a diversity hiring strategy, all in an attempt to “honestly address historical inequities and be intentional about creating a better future.”
Source: CBS News
