Virginia Military Institute offers 14 different classes in military history, from “European Warfare, 1600-1871” to “Insurgency and Terrorism in History.”
That date range leaves out the study of ancient warriors, at least one of whom may still be relevant to VMI today: Pyrrhus, the Greek king and general who we remember with the term “Pyrrhic victory,” meaning a victory that may not have been worth the cost.
Pyrrhus gained his unfortunate legacy with the Battle of Asculum in 279 B.C., where he defeated the Romans but lost so many soldiers that he was unable to continue. The historian Plutarch quotes Pyrrhus as saying: “If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.”
The question before us is whether the VMI opponents of Superintendent Cedric Wins won a Pyrrhic victory when the board of visitors voted 10-6 on Friday not to renew the contract of the school’s first Black superintendent.
I am in no position to opine on whether Wins was good or bad for VMI and whether he should or should not have had his contract extended. I am better situated to appraise the political ramifications of the decision and I see two potential danger points for those on the anti-Wins side of the ledger.
The first is short term, the second is long term.
The short-term danger is that the Republican appointees who made this decision to show Wins the door have inadvertently given Democrats a talking point for the upcoming gubernatorial campaign that they didn’t have before.
We can argue all day long about who first politicized VMI in general, and this personnel decision in particular. The point is, it has been politicized. Rep. Ben Cline, R-Botetourt County, whose district includes VMI, has alleged that state Sen. Jennifer Carroll Foy, D-Prince William County and a VMI grad, has told at least one board member that the school’s funding was in jeopardy if Wins’ contract wasn’t renewed. Former Gov. Douglas Wilder, House Speaker Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, and the Virginia NAACP were among those who weighed in beforehand urging a contract renewal. All of that is recent, but it also follows years of tussling over VMI and which of its traditions should survive into the modern era. The Battle of VMI could take up an entire course all its own.
The question here is not the past but the future, and the immediate future is an election year in which the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and all 100 seats in a closely divided House of Delegates are on the ballot. We don’t know yet how energized each party’s base will be this fall. We know that eight years ago, when Donald Trump had just taken office, his presidency prompted a backlash that saw Democrats win all three statewide offices and make bigger gains in the House than at any time since the 1890s. We also know that four years ago Democratic voters were fairly complacent compared to Republicans, and that complacency (along with a supercharged Republican base) helped Republicans win.
One constituency that wasn’t particularly motivated four years ago consisted of Black voters. Turnout in Black precincts across the state was generally so-so. Furthermore, in last year’s presidential race, Trump won a bigger share of the vote among Black voters than any Republican in 48 years, according to CNN political analyst Harry Enten. Black voters have been a growth area for Republicans and a potential weak spot for Democrats.
Maybe come September, October, November, Black voters in Virginia won’t care about what happened to Wins in February. However, right now many of the state’s most prominent Black officeholders — Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears excepted — care a great deal about what happened to Wins. Furthermore, the presumptive Democratic nominee for governor, Abigail Spanberger, has had a less-than-warm relationship with certain key Black legislators. That’s one reason that Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Newport News, floated his name as a potential candidate, although he’s done nothing toward actually running and the clock will soon run out on his ability to get on the ballot. What Spanberger may not have been able to do on her own — get key Black legislators excited about the campaign — the VMI board may have done for her. If Wins’ ouster becomes a talking point that those Democrats can use this fall to motivate some of their supporters who have been sitting out recent elections or drifting to the other side, Republicans may regret what 10 Republican appointees on the VMI board just did.
Usually it’s easier to foresee the more immediate future and harder to discern things further out. This is a case where the situation may be reversed. There will be lots of things to roil the upcoming campaign and the Wins decision may or may not be important. What’s more certain, though, is that support for VMI among Democrats in the legislature has been eroding over time. This event runs the risk of eroding that support even more.
Four years ago, when there were reports of female cadets at VMI being sexually assaulted, the Twitter hashtag #DefundVMI trended and two legislators raised the prospect of reducing or even eliminating the school’s state funding.
“I’m embarrassed that this is going on at a Virginia-financed institution,” state Sen. Janet Howell, D-Fairfax County and then chair of the budget-writing Senate Finance Committee, told The Washington Post. “I am thinking about reducing their state support if they don’t make rapid changes.”
Del. Mark Levine, D-Fairfax County, was even more forceful: “If VMI can’t rid itself of endemic sexism and racism — and discipline students involved in it — Virginia must defund it entirely.”
Both those legislators are now out of the General Assembly, but those sentiments may not be. We don’t know how this year’s elections will turn out but at some point, we may well have a trifecta where Democrats control the governor’s office and both chambers of the General Assembly. VMI supporters are right to be wary of what might happen then. Other state colleges can always count on bipartisan support in Richmond; we may be headed toward a time when VMI can’t. That should worry VMI supporters.
“Engineering the ouster of the commandant before the legislature has time to review Board of Visitors appointees is not the best way to ingratiate your school to the General Assembly,” Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax County, warned Friday in a text message.
In a separate statement, Foy called on both the General Assembly and the governor to investigate the school: “If Governor Youngkin is committed to VMI’s future, he should support an independent expert evaluation of the Board’s mishandling of the current situation.” The reference to “VMI’s future” could just be boilerplate; it could also be an ominous warning that future legislative support for VMI is not assured.
Indeed, on Friday afternoon, Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax County, posted on social media: “There needs to be a real discussion about continued taxpayer subsidization of VMI in light of what appears to me to be a Board decision to terminate General Wins for his work against racism and sex assault at the school.”
The prospect of a future Democratic administration and legislature shutting down VMI is far-fetched, but it’s not impossible. In fact, it’s happened once before. In 1928, when attachment to the old Southern ways were far stronger than they are today, a state report recommended that VMI be shuttered.
The year before, the General Assembly had ordered a thorough review of the state’s education system and put together a high-powered commission that included at least three state legislators, a former legislator-turned-gubernatorial staffer, a judge and the presidents of two private schools — Roanoke College and Sweet Briar College. Their report that came back made many far-reaching recommendations. It called for the University of Virginia to admit women (something that didn’t happen for decades). It also called for VMI to be closed.
The report found that “the most serious and expensive item of duplication in Virginia is to be found in the continued maintenance of Virginia Military Institute. Aside from the military features of its program, there is no educational service being rendered at Virginia Military Institute which is not already duplicated or can be more advantageously and less expensively duplicated at the other taxpayer-supported institutions.”
The commissioners admitted that they had “a most difficult task” to come to that conclusion, especially because of the school’s association with the Confederate general Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, “whose life and works would seem to set apart Virginia Military Institute forever as a shrine for the people of the South.” Ultimately, though, “we cannot believe that this should be done by the expensive duplication now in operation.” The report called for the General Assembly to stop funding the school and instead lease the property at a rate of $1 per year to any alumni interested in operating VMI as a private school. If none could be found, then the buildings should be used instead to establish “an institution providing for vocational work.”
The General Assembly of the 1920s obviously balked at the proposal and it wasn’t heard from again. The danger for VMI supporters is that the legislature of the 2020s might someday think that almost century-old idea is a pretty good one, after all.
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