Local

VMI commandant to retire as racial reckoning continues

By Ian Shapira
Jan. 23, 2021 at 7:00 a.m. EST

The commandant of the Virginia Military Institute, William “Bill” Wanovich, who came under scrutiny for posing in a photo mocking Hispanics at a campus Halloween party three years ago, is retiring at the end of the academic year, the college announced Friday. ... Wanovich’s pending departure marks the latest major disruption at VMI since The Washington Post published a series of stories exposing racism at the nation’s oldest state-supported military college.

[At VMI, Black cadets endure lynching threats, Klan memories and Confederacy veneration]

The revelations prompted Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D), a VMI graduate, to order an independent investigation into what he called the school’s “clear and appalling culture of ongoing structural racism.” The investigation will be completed later this year.

In October, the college’s longtime superintendent, retired Gen. J.H. Binford Peay III, resigned. He was replaced by retired Army Maj. Gen. Cedric T. Wins, the college’s first Black leader in its 181-year history. Wins is serving as interim superintendent until the college selects a permanent successor to Peay later this year.

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In December, The Post published a story about Rafael Jenkins, a student who is Black and Hispanic and was threatened with a lynching by a White student in August 2018. When his father told Wanovich that he wanted the White student expelled, he said Wanovich responded by saying that many of VMI’s cadets had grown up in racist homes and that he hoped the college could change them.

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Ian Shapira
Ian Shapira is a features writer on the local enterprise team and enjoys writing about people who have served in the military and intelligence communities. He has covered education, criminal justice, technology and art crime. Follow https://twitter.com/ianshapira