VMI & the Task Force

Time to brass it out.

Virginia Military Institute, defined in the broadest sense of its extended community, may wish to reconsider its collective commitment to being correct and thoughtful.

Meaning, under the circumstances, consider this to be a threat assessment.

VMI’s loyalists should not confuse a proposed legislative “study”—a proposed task force, in this instance—for being anything other than hostile to the school itself. The Democrats are coming. They yearn to lash out and there it sits—VMI—on the open plateau of Virginia’s culture wars, an optimal target of opportunity.

To put it another way, you’re as likely to get a sympathetic, balanced, sensible response out of the current General Assembly on the subject of this long‑venerated, state‑owned school—VMI—as you would out of the Trump administration on the subject of immigration.

The Democrats came before. On October 19, 2020, then‑Gov. Ralph Northam, along with other Democratic Party leaders (no Republicans), sent a letter to VMI board president John W. Boland and other members of the VMI Board of Visitors, saying, “We write to express our deep concerns about the clear and appalling culture of ongoing structural racism at the Virginia Military Institute.”

The letter did not say, “We’re worried about a newspaper report.”

It did not say “could be” or “might be.”

The letter offered no doubt or room for discovery at all. It made declarations. It openly condemned VMI.

“As the nation’s oldest state‑run military college,” the letter continued, “the Institute exalts the virtues of honor, sacrifice, dignity, and service—but it is clear these values do not extend to all students.”

“Clear?”

The letter then went on to make references to the Ku Klux Klan, the “Lost Cause” and the “Confederacy,” none of which had any relevance to the cultural reality of VMI, its academic program, or its extensive ROTC regimen. It was a stitched‑together fantasy of unsubstantiated lunacy—and Democrats reveled in it. It fit the moment.

Northam’s 2020 letter bore the fingerprints of Dr. Janice Underwood, Virginia’s first cabinet‑level chief diversity officer. Appointed by Northam in 2019, Underwood gave an interview the next year saying that, “because racism is institutionalized, we realize we must institutionalize mechanisms to confront it. We are confronting racist policies and culture with anti‑racist mechanisms.”

Underwood meant it and would later extend her crusade in a similar position with the Biden administration.

But she’s gone now, right?

Not really. Gov. Abigail Spanberger has appointed Dr. Sesha Joi Moon to the same position and there is no indication—none—that Dr. Moon’s underlying analysis of racism is meaningfully different from Janice Underwood’s; if anything, her record suggests a similarly structural, explicitly anti‑racist approach, framed in somewhat broader constitutional and “all‑forms‑of‑discrimination” language.

Responding to Northam’s 2020 letter, Boland wrote that the school would welcome “an objective, independent review of VMI’s culture and the Institute’s handling of allegations of racism and/or discrimination.” Boland pledged the full cooperation of VMI officials in the review.

That was a reasoned and optimistic response from a decent and honest man. It typified VMI’s collective mentality. Be reasonable; be honorable. Above all, be polite.

Northam, in turn, metaphorically jumped into a truck, slammed it in gear, and ran VMI and its loyalist legions down in the road.

Last month, the new governor, Abigail Spanberger, put Northam on the VMI Board of Visitors.

Again: The Democrats are coming.

On Friday, on the floor of the House of Delegates, Fairfax Del. Dan Helmer successfully advanced his legislation, House Bill 1377, to create a “task force to determine whether Virginia Military Institute should continue to be a state‑sponsored institution of higher learning.”

This is a first. Which is to say it has never been done before.

Why is it being done now?

At what point, upon what mandate, did the Virginia General Assembly embrace the idea that it would oversee—effectively regulate and administer—the 15 colleges and universities that Virginia owns?

That would be the practical effect of Helmer’s legislation. It would subordinate the boards of visitors and impose legislative judgment. It would complete the politicization of Virginia higher education.

Helmer is not out to study anything. He intends to do things.

Often, during the discussions under way in the present General Assembly, you hear references to what the legislature may do. That part is written down and you can look it up.

What you do not hear discussed is what the General Assembly should—or should not—do. That part is driven by wisdom and experience, and not, in its modern history, has the General Assembly been in such short supply of both.

Helmer’s task force legislation makes the point. You just have to read it. It starts with the conclusions of a 1928 education commission.

Yes, 1928.

That would be the Barton Commission, named after its chairman, state Sen. Robert Barton of Winchester and, as legislative disasters go, this one was a pip.

The commission issued its report on the very last day of 1927, called for VMI’s closure, the reorganization of Virginia higher education under the central control of a “chancellor”—a high priest of higher learning or something—and an overall commitment to “efficiency” by Virginia’s colleges and universities.

The Barton Commission wanted to abolish all state scholarships (just take out a loan), limit all graduate study to the University of Virginia alone, restrict liberal arts instruction to UVA and William and Mary, end basic sciences or premedical work at the Medical College of Virginia, and “throw open” UVA’s doors to women.

Admittedly, that last recommendation was well worth advancing. But it got lost in the controversy stirred up by the centralization proposal and the proposed end of VMI. On those topics, the Barton Commission crashed, burned, and no one looked back.

Until now. Thank you, Dan Helmer.

Why resurrect the 1928 Barton Commission recommendations in 2026? To fill space in HB 1377, mostly. Rest assured, the drafters of HB 1377 couldn’t explain the work of the Barton Commission any more than they could elucidate the meaning of the Lost Cause, on which they also appear fixated.

Helmer’s task force would also examine alumni with “legacy” connections, implying that cadets in that category received special treatment.

Right.

Presumably, that would include Ms. Anastasia Herrel, presently the Cadet Corps’ 3rd Battalion commanding officer. Her father graduated from VMI in 2001. Her family has been the greatest influence in her life, she says. She explicitly celebrates her legacy.

Helmer, take a note. A VMI “legacy” is not someone being fed advantages. At VMI, it is someone following a family member’s example. There is a significant difference between the two.

By the way, how many of VMI’s battalion commanders are women?

All of them.

Further down in this legislation, Helmer complains that retired Major General Cedric Wins had “the shortest tenure as Superintendent in VMI history,” again implying some nefarious cause.

Well, Wins led VMI for four and three-quarter years or two years longer than Gene Nichol occupied the president’s office at the College of William & Mary. Nichol’s was the school’s briefest presidency since the Civil War.

Based on national data, it’s worth noting, public college and university presidents now serve about 6 years on average, with many leaving within 5 years.

Not a single reporter, much less a single legislator, has made any real effort to discover why Cedric Wins left VMI. With his contract running out, the VMI Board of Visitors did, in fact, offer him a single‑year extension and he declined it.

Nichol never even got the one‑year offer and insisted that his contract non‑renewal was driven by ideological opposition to his way of thinking. Years later, Nichol blasted Virginia as a whole for its “fawning embrace of its past, stifling and self‑deluding classism and *noblesse oblige*, which turns out to carry neither nobility nor obligation, but only pretense and privilege—the opposite of uplifting.”

Ah, yes, Gene had a way of thinking. No question about it.

As Nichol scurried back to North Carolina, William and Mary’s board simply observed there had been “a general judgment that the college could not reach its full potential without a change in leadership.”

That was the deal with Wins, almost exactly.

Virginia charges the college and university boards to make these leadership decisions. Subject them to some ad hoc political appellate court and we’re all in trouble.

Of course, Helmer and his fellow Democrats—a resolute but rather thick‑headed bunch—would have the world believe otherwise, but that’s a political formulation. It works for them to think the worst.

Last fall’s state elections bolstered the Democrats’ numbers in the House of Delegates. In turn, the Democrats have confidently reclaimed the progressive agenda—the agenda, they believe, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin rudely interrupted four years ago.

No matter, say the Democrats. With one of their own back in the Governor’s Office—that would be Gov. Spanberger—they may renew the work of straightening out Virginia once and for all.

Here’s how this goes: Democrats imagine VMI to be a relic of Virginia’s benighted past. They see VMI as being staffed, directed, and supported by Republican reactionaries, and these people, they believe, will never embrace the diversity, equity, and inclusion edicts that have become core to Democratic Party doctrine.

DEI has become the thing, a moral language for all Democratic Party actors and aligned organizations - a political manifesto. DEI determines who enters the room, whose leadership is embraced, and whose experiences influence policy.

The remarkable thing is that Virginia’s colleges and universities have been free to find their own mountaintops. These schools were not created and sustained to be one thing.

In this regard, VMI fights to preserve Virginia’s institutional diversity. It has become a prime battlefield.

While Helmer’s task force may be the first, don’t count on it to be the last. The General Assembly appears prepared to police and enforce homogeneity in higher learning.

That’s worth fighting over, so let’s have at it. Shelve the apologies. It’s time to stand up in the wind and not flinch. The beauty and majesty of VMI lie in its commitment to the individual, to treating everyone not as members of groups, but rather as individual human beings with inherent dignity. The school judges people by their character and accomplishments and labors to further develop both.

And it succeeds.

On that basis, pound-for-pound, acre-for-acre, has any campus in Virginia given more to the United States of America? Arguably, no.

That needs to be said, said again, said over and over.