THURSDAY The Virginia Military Institute's Board of Visitors met yesterday to consider the recommendation of the Commonwealth of Virginia's audit of VMI's diversity, equity and inclusion practices.
LEXINGTON, Va. – What’s been months in the making is now complete.
On Tuesday, Barnes & Thornburg LLP released the final report from its special investigation team regarding the equity audit and investigation of racism at Virginia Military Institute.
“This investigation found that institutional racism and sexism are present, tolerated, and left unaddressed at VMI,” according to page 8 of the report.
While the report does not recommend that any of VMI’s core policies, practices and traditions, including the Honor Code and Rat Line, be abolished, it does recommend that VMI leadership examine how it can create an environment that does not disadvantage or impose disparate effects on minorities.
VMIâs spokesman on Wednesday acknowledged that quarantined cadets were not fully separated from their peers for the entirety of an annual event last weekend.
âIn retrospect, we needed to ensure that they stayed separate,â Bill Wyatt said in an interview Wednesday. âAnd judging from some of the photos that Iâve seen â and like I said, Iâm still trying to confirm it. Did that in fact happen? I think [separation] happened most of the day. But toward the end, things get a little hectic, and it appears that it might not have stayed that way for the entire day.â