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byline: Rich Griset

Hampton Roads operator of Downtown and Midtown tunnels sold in $2B+ deal

Elizabeth River Crossings HoldCo LLC, the operator of the Downtown and Midtown tunnels that run between Norfolk and Portsmouth, has been sold to Abertis Infraestructuras S.A. and Manulife Investment Management Ltd., on behalf of John Hancock Life Insurance Co., for more than $2 billion.

Elizabeth River Crossings operates four tunnels and a highway in the Norfolk area, and its transportation infrastructure is used by more than 100,000 vehicles for daily commutes. Joint owners Skanska and Macquarie Infrastructure Partners II have agreed to sell their stakes in Elizabeth River Crossings for a combined $1.25 billion. The new owners will also assume ERC’s net debt of $1.2 million.

Abertis is a Spanish toll road company. Toronto-based Manulife Investment Management, a long-term institutional infrastructure investor, reached the agreement on behalf of John Hancock Life Insurance Co., a Boston-based subsidiary of Manulife and a consortium member with Abertis.

According to a statement from Abertis, the acquisition of these assets is “a further important step in Abertis’ growth strategy in the key target market of the United States, one of the most important markets for infrastructure investment in the world.” Abertis will have control of the company.

Elizabeth River Crossings was established by Skanska and Macquarie Infrastructure Partners II, a fund managed by Macquarie Infrastructure & Real Assets (“MIP II”) in 2012 as part of a public-private partnership with the Virginia Department of Transportation. The partnership was formed to rehabilitate the existing Downtown and Midtown tunnels, construct a new, parallel Midtown Tunnel and extend the Martin Luther King Freeway to Interstate 264. The partnership saw Elizabeth River Crossings assume all tolling, operations and maintenance of these facilities through 2070. The construction of the new Midtown Tunnel was completed by a Skanska-led construction joint venture in 2016, almost a year ahead of schedule.

“This acquisition is a further step in the ambitious growth strategy of the Abertis Group, with the acquisition of a solid platform in the United States, a country that offers a strong commitment to public-private partnerships and to the concession framework,” Abertis CEO José Aljaro said in a statement.

 

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Chicago firm will acquire Tysons-based management/IT consulting firm

West Monroe, a Chicago-based business and tech consulting firm, has reached a deal to acquire Tysons-based Pace Harmon, a management and IT consulting firm.

Pace Harmon works with Fortune 500 companies and other large enterprises to determine their optimal service delivery model — in IT and back-office business functions — to optimize performance, cost, responsiveness and service quality.

According to a statement, the acquisition “adds depth in transformation advisory for West Monroe, as well as new capabilities in IT strategy and business process outsourcing, procurement and vendor management.” The statement also reads that the acquisition is the largest in West Monroe’s history, and “is in direct response to the evolving technology landscape: IT and back-office functions within major corporations are being radically transformed by the cloud and digital transformation, which embeds technology strategies and decisions into all functions and lines of business.”

“Pace Harmon’s expertise in value creation and cost takeout are both complementary and additive to West Monroe,” said Doug Armstrong, COO of West Monroe. “Their depth and decades of experience in this space make them highly effective partners, and we are excited to bring our combined capabilities to market and help companies meet these challenges.”

Neustar to acquire DNS service

Sterling-based identity management company Neustar has agreed to acquire Verisign Public DNS, a free domain name system, from Reston-based Verisign.

The DNS is essentially a phone book of the internet, translating domain names into internet protocol addresses, allowing browsers to access internet resources. The acquired service provides security and threat blocking on the internet.

The move is part of a strategy by Verisign to refocus on domain name management. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“A critical component of the overall DNS ecosystem, Recursive DNS is responsible for navigating and connecting outbound business interactions, such as email and service portal [application programming interfaces], to the open internet and external customers,” said Brian McCann, president of security solutions at Neustar, in a statement. “The addition of Verisign Public DNS to the Neustar family will utilize our recently upgraded DNS network infrastructure.”

$1.2M grant approved for Dickenson County industrial site

A grant for up to $1.2 million in infrastructure improvements to the Red Onion Industrial Site in Dickenson County was recently approved by Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority board.

The funds, which will be given to the Dickenson County Industrial Development Authority, will be used to help finance site grading, site development, access road construction and storm drainage improvements at the Red Onion site, which is also known as the Coalfield Regional Industrial Park. The funds will also be used for the extension of utilities, including water, sewer, electric, natural gas and broadband to the property.

“Infrastructure availability is a key piece in the marketing of an industrial site to a prospective new business,” said Jonathan Belcher, VCEDA executive director/general counsel. “A site equipped with roads, storm drainage, utilities, natural gas and broadband — ready and waiting for a potential new business — provides additional incentive for a prospect eyeing many different pieces of property to ultimately make the decision to choose the property which already has many of its basic needs met.”

Created by the General Assembly in 1988, the Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority is an organization that provides funding for regional economic development projects from a percentage of the coal and natural gas severance taxes paid by coal and natural gas companies operating in the region. Located in Southwest Virginia, the region includes Buchanan, Dickenson, Lee, Russell, Scott, Tazewell, and Wise counties and the city of Norton.

“The funding to develop the Red Onion Industrial Site will give the IDA a prime piece of marketable property,” said Larry Yates, Dickenson County IDA chairman. “This opportunity is one of the last pieces of the puzzle.”

Yates noted the property will offer redundant broadband services, which he said will make the site more attractive to data center businesses.

“The data center industry is a very competitive, up-and-coming market,” Yates said. “The Red Onion site is a multilayer site and could be the home of more than one industry. The IDA looks forward to bringing more job opportunities to the residents of Dickenson County, as well as to surrounding counties.”

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COVID-19 on rise in Va., as nation sees cases surge

Virginia recorded an increase of 9,143 COVID-19 cases and 77 deaths last week, according to Virginia Department of Health statistics reported Monday, Nov. 2. The state’s positivity rate climbed from 5% to 5.8%.

Virginia’s case numbers are relatively low compared to other states, which have seen positivity rates zoom far above 10% in recent weeks. On Oct. 30, the United States recorded 98,583 new cases, a new daily record.

As of Monday, Virginia has seen 183,418 total coronavirus cases and 3,658 deaths since the pandemic started.

Several Virginia health districts reported positivity rates above 10%, including Alleghany, Lenowisco, Mount Rogers, Roanoke and West Piedmont.

The Alleghany Health District — the cities of Covington and Salem and the counties of Alleghany, Botetourt, Craig and Roanoke — saw its positivity rate rise to 12%, up from 9% on Oct. 23. The Lenowisco Health District — which covers Lee, Scott and Wise counties and the city of Norton — saw its positivity rate rise to 17.9%, up from 12% on Oct. 23. The Roanoke Health District saw its positivity rate rise up to 10.1%, up from 8.2% on Oct. 23. Including Franklin, Henry and Patrick counties and the city of Martinsville, West Piedmont Health District’s rate declined slightly to 10.9% on Oct. 29; it was 11.3% on Oct. 23.

Several Virginia universities report COVID-19 rates among students, faculty and staff members, although some universities use different reporting metrics and methods. Here are the most current university stats:

  • James Madison University: 1,615 total cases since July 1. The overall positivity rate of student tests at the university’s health center was 0.8% as of Nov. 2.
  • Virginia Tech: 1,478 positive tests since Aug. 3, with 84 new cases from Oct. 26 to Nov. 1. The seven-day positivity rate as of Nov. 1 is 2.6%.
  • University of Virginia: 1,100 positive cases among students and employees reported since Aug. 17. The university recorded 51 new cases from Oct. 18-24, according to its tracker.
  • Virginia Commonwealth University: 353 total positive tests, including 337 student cases, as of Oct. 30. According to prevalence testing, the positivity rate is 0.23% as of Oct. 30.
  • Old Dominion University: 164 positive cases out of 5,863 tests performed as of Nov. 2. From Oct. 25-31, there were 11 new positive tests.
  • George Mason University: 127 positive cases among students and employees between Aug. 17 and Nov. 1, including 25 positive tests in the past two weeks.
  • Radford University: 524 total positive cases among students and employees as of Oct. 27, with 35 new cases since Oct. 20. Cumulative positivity rate is 10.9% as of Oct. 27. The dashboard is updated each Tuesday.
  • Liberty University: 80 positive cases from Oct. 14-27 among students and staff, out of a total 669 cases between Aug. 16-Oct. 27.

These are the 10 Virginia localities that have seen the most cases in the state, as of Nov. 2:

  • Fairfax County: 24,399
  • Prince William County: 14,660
  • Virginia Beach: 8,248
  • Loudoun County: 8,048
  • Chesterfield County: 7,320
  • Henrico County: 6,569
  • Norfolk: 5,534
  • Richmond: 5,499
  • Chesapeake: 5,058
  • Arlington County: 4,778

Globally, there are 46.8 million reported COVID-19 cases and 1,203,978 confirmed deaths as of Nov. 2. The United States, which has the most confirmed cases and deaths worldwide, has seen 9.25 million confirmed cases so far, with 231,227 deaths attributed to the coronavirus since February.

 

 

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Dominion proposes nine new solar projects

Richmond-based Dominion Energy Inc. proposed a new slate of projects on Monday that would bring nearly 500 megawatts of solar energy to Virginia customers, enough to power around 125,000 homes at peak output.

The proposal, which the utility called “its largest slate yet of new solar projects” in a statement, was submitted for approval by the State Corporation Commission and follows the enactment of the Virginia Clean Economy Act, which was signed into law by Gov. Ralph Northam in April.

Six of the nine new solar projects would generate 416 megawatts of energy at peak output through power purchase agreements that Dominion said followed “a competitive solicitation process”; power purchase agreements are contracts between two parties where one generates electricity and another buys it. According to Dominion, this approach contributes to Virginia’s clean energy economy and fulfills a VCEA requirement of having approximately a third of new solar and onshore wind be procured through power purchase agreements through 2035.

The other three proposed solar projects are utility-owned. Dominion says they are expected to provide over $100 million in direct and indirect economic benefits in Virginia and support approximately 750 jobs. These projects are Grassfield Solar in Chesapeake, Norge Solar in James City County and Sycamore Solar in Pittsylvania County. Each of the facilities is under development and subject to approval by the State Corporation Commission before construction begins.

Grassfield Solar, which was acquired from Solar Access Development Group LLC and Blue Green Energy LLC, would provide 20 MW at peak output. Norge Solar, which was acquired from Clearway Energy Group, would provide 20 MW at peak output. Sycamore Solar, which was acquired from a joint venture between Open Road Renewables LLC and MAP Energy LLC, would provide 42 MW at peak output.

If approved, Dominion says the solar projects would add less than 20 cents to the typical residential electricity bill and be offset in part by fuel savings. The utility says these resources will help it meet the VCEA’s mandatory renewable portfolio standard, which generally requires that 100% of its electricity sales in Virginia be sourced from clean energy resources by 2045.

“This filing is another concrete step toward our commitment to bring more renewable energy to Virginia and build a clean, sustainable future for our customers and our Commonwealth,” said Ed Baine, president of Dominion Energy in Virginia. “We are focused on adding significant renewable energy resources, such as solar and wind, over the next 15 years while maintaining our commitment to excellent reliability and delivering an excellent value to our customers.”

Ken Schrad, spokesman for the SCC, said that two recent solar build cases took about six months from the date of application to receive a final order, and that a solar purchase power agreement case took about four months from the date of application to the final order. After a first review by the SCC commission, a scheduling order is issued after about 30 days that lays out the timeline for the case.

Tim Cywinski, spokesman for the Sierra Club Virginia Chapter, said that implementing solar developments are generally positive, while stressing the need for oversight of Dominion.

“If implemented with an emphasis on accessibility, solar energy will benefit our health by reducing pollution, our wallets by reducing electric bills, our climate by replacing fossil fuels, and our economy by creating jobs,” he said. “With Dominion’s history of overcharging its captive customers, equitable state oversight by the SCC is paramount.”

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Richmond mayor to launch guaranteed income pilot

Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney unveiled a guaranteed income pilot program on Thursday that will give 18 working families $500 a month for 24 months.

The city, in partnership with the Robins Foundation, has launched the Richmond Resilience Initiative. The program is intended to benefit families who no longer qualify for benefits assistance but still do not earn a living wage.

“The Richmond Resilience Initiative pilot will go far in both supporting hardworking families and providing the necessary data points to design policies that promote sustainable economic security and mobility,” Stoney said in a statement. “The pandemic has proven that for many families, $500 can be the difference between staying sheltered or losing your home, buying groceries or going hungry, and that degree of vulnerability is unacceptable.”

The news release announcing the program states that the Federal Reserve found that 40% of American families could not afford a $400 emergency even before the pandemic. Because of the pandemic, even more families are at risk of financial insecurity. Guaranteed income payments are intended to supplement the existing safety net, and the program is part of a larger national movement to foster economic security, modeled after successful pilots in cities such as Stockton, California.

In September it was announced that Stoney had joined Mayors for Guaranteed Income, a coalition of more than 25 mayors “committed to piloting universal income programs to promote economic empowerment.” Funding for Richmond’s program will come from the Robins Foundation and federal CARES Act funding. The pilot cohort will be comprised of clientele of the city Office of Community Wealth Building, a workforce development and economic mobility agency created at the recommendation of the 2011 Richmond Anti-poverty Commission.

“More than just a pilot program, this plan is a first step toward state and national policy that will help qualified, working families in need to close the gap between the social safety net and sustainable employment,” Stoney stated.

Stoney is currently running for reelection in a five-way race for mayor. In a poll conducted by the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University and commissioned by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Stoney is leading, with 36% of surveyed voters saying they would support him. Trailing him are Richmond City Councilwoman Kim Gray with 16%, Alexsis Rodgers with 15%, Justin Griffin with 1% and Tracey Mclean. Some 30% of poll respondents were unsure of which candidate to support.

In Richmond, a candidate must win five of the city’s nine voter districts to win. If no candidate wins five of the nine, the top two candidates must face each other in a runoff election.

 

 

VMI votes to remove Stonewall Jackson statue

On Thursday Virginia Military Institute’s Board of Visitors voted unanimously to remove the statue of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson amid a state probe into reports of a culture of racism at the state-supported university.

According to a statement from Bill Wyatt, VMI spokesman, the board “took bold and unanimous action to move VMI forward. The board ordered the statue of Thomas J. ‘Stonewall’ Jackson moved from the front of the historic barracks to an appropriate location, perhaps the battlefield at New Market. The VMI administration will handle the orderly movement of the statue.”

The vote comes on the heels of the resignation of the school’s superintendent, retired U.S. Army Gen. J.H. Binford Peay III. After an Oct. 17 Washington Post exposé alleged that there is an atmosphere of “relentless racism at the nation’s oldest state-supported military college,” a letter issued by Gov. Ralph Northam and other top state legislators announced a probe into allegations of racism at the Lexington state-supported school.

The board’s Oct. 29 statement also reads that a permanent diversity officer will be appointed at VMI and that a permanent diversity and inclusion committee will be established. The board has established a search committee to identify VMI’s next superintendent, created a permanent diversity office, created diversity initiatives to include a focus on gender and directed the adoption of VMI hiring practices and a diversity hiring plan. New Market, the place where the Jackson statue may be relocated, is a Civil War battlefield where VMI cadets fought and several died.

William “Bill” Boland, president of the board of visitors stated, “I am proud of the commitment by the VMI family to continue fulfilling our mission. VMI, like all aspects of society, must honestly address historical inequities and be intentional about creating a better future.”

Founded in 1839, VMI has been called “The West Point of the South,” and is the oldest state-supported military college in the country. Jackson joined VMI’s faculty in 1851 as a professor of natural and experimental philosophy, a precursor to natural science. The statue of Jackson is located in front of the student barracks, and until recent years, students were required to salute it when they passed.

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Con man gets 7 years for $4.4M government intelligence scam

A former Drug Enforcement Administration spokesperson was sentenced to seven years in federal prison on Wednesday for defrauding at least a dozen companies of more than $4 million while pretending to be a covert officer of the Central Intelligence Agency.

In June, Garrison Kenneth Courtney, 44, of Florida, entered a guilty plea in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria for wire fraud. He faced a maximum sentence of 20 years.

According to court documents filed by federal prosecutors, from roughly 2012 through 2016, Courtney claimed to be a member of the CIA involved in a classified program or task force. As explained by Courtney, the classified program would work with private companies to provide goods and services to governmental defense and intelligence agencies. Courtney told private companies that he needed them to hire him and an unnamed associate to provide “commercial cover” for his covert work, either as employees or as independent contractors. In exchange, Courtney told the companies that they would be reimbursed “via the award of lucrative contracts from the government.” Though unnamed, 13 companies are listed in court documents as part of the scam, most of which are headquartered in Northern Virginia.

“Courtney – along with his five aliases – will now spend the next seven years in federal prison for his deceitful and felonious criminal conduct,” said G. Zachary Terwilliger, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. “Courtney’s brazen and salacious fraud was centered on the lie that he was involved in a highly-classified intelligence program, and that he was a covert CIA officer engaged in significant national security work. In fact, Courtney never worked for the CIA, the supposed classified program did not exist and Courtney invented the elaborate lie to cheat his victims out of over $4.4 million.”

According to court documents, Courtney was employed as a public affairs officer for the DEA from about 2005 to 2009. Sometime around 2005, Courtney applied for a job with the CIA and a conditional offer was extended to him, but he didn’t respond and the offer lapsed around 2007. Courtney was never employed by the CIA, and no longer worked for the federal government after 2009.

Prosecutors say Courtney fraudulently obtained a job with the National Institutes of Health Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center (NITAA) as a private contractor, which granted him access to sensitive and private information about federal agencies. According to federal authorities, Courtney used this information to direct money from contracts to the companies involved in the scam. According to prosecutors, Courtney was actively seeking to corrupt more than $3.7 billion in federal procurements when law enforcement disrupted his scheme.

Courtney claimed that the fake classified program had been established by high-level government officials, including the president of the United States, the U.S. attorney general and the director of national intelligence, among others. He referred to the program under invented codenames, including “Alpha214” and “A214.”

Often, Courtney held meetings with victims and intended victims inside a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF), a room or facility intended to house classified information. By using a SCIF, Courtney was able “to perpetuate the illusion that he was a covert intelligence officer and that the supposed classified program was real,” prosecutors wrote.

As part of the scheme, Courtney created a fraudulent backstory about himself, including that he had served in the U.S. Army during the Gulf War, had hundreds of confirmed kills and had sustained lung injuries from smoke caused by fires set to Iraq’s oil fields. He also claimed that a hostile foreign intelligence service had attempted to assassinate him by poisoning him with ricin. All of these claims were false.

Courtney also sought to use the power of the government to protect his scheme and attempt to defeat law enforcement’s investigation into his plot. Prosecutors say he “caused a public official to attempt to prevent a private company from responding to a grand jury subpoena; caused a civilian attorney with the Air Force to contact one of the prosecutors on the case in an attempt to read that prosecutor in to the bogus program, thereby freezing the investigation; caused a public official to threaten FBI agents investigating this case with themselves being prosecuted if they did not drop the investigation; falsely told victims who had questioned his legitimacy that they were about to be arrested by the FBI for supposedly leaking classified information; used unwitting public officials to feed the names of innocent witnesses to the FBI, in the hopes that the FBI would seek to prosecute those innocent persons for supposedly leaking classified information, thereby diverting attention from himself” and other machinations, according to a press release issued after his sentencing.

“The sentence handed down today should serve as a warning to those who would seek to cheat the American taxpayers and pervert the federal procurement system for their own ill-gotten gain,” said Stanley A. Newell, special agent in charge of the Transnational Operations Field Office of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service. “In a scheme that sounds like something out of the movies, this adept con artist hid behind a veil of phony classified programs, concocted a fake identity for himself as a government spy and duped unsuspecting victims out of millions of dollars.”

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VMI superintendent resigns amid racism probe

Following Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s announcement of a probe into allegations of racism at Virginia Military Institute, the school’s superintendent, retired U.S. Army Gen. J.H. Binford Peay III, has resigned.

In a letter dated Oct. 26, Peay said that the probe announced by Gov. Ralph Northam and other top state legislators into allegations of racism at VMI in Lexington conveyed that they “had lost confidence in my leadership” and “therefore desired my resignation.” The letter is addressed to John Boland, president of the VMI board of visitors. Peay, who is white, is a 1962 VMI graduate who has served as superintendent since 2003.

Boland also issued a statement reading that the board “accepted [Peay’s resignation] with deep regret,” and that the board of visitors would “immediately turn its attention to the search for our new superintendent.” VMI spokesperson Bill Wyatt did not immediately respond to questions from Virginia Business about the process and timeline for selecting a new superintendent.

An Oct. 17 Washington Post exposé alleged that there is an atmosphere of “relentless racism at the nation’s oldest state-supported military college.” Two days later, Northam and other top state legislators announced that they were “directing an independent, third-party review of VMI culture, policies, practices and equity in disciplinary procedures.” A “nonpartisan, national organization” will conduct the review and report findings before the end of 2020, to allow for “any necessary legislative action” by the General Assembly during its 2021 session, which begins in January.

In The Washington Post story, a Black freshman recounted being told by a white sophomore that he’d be lynched and his corpse would be used “as a punching bag” in 2018 during Hell Week, a punishing 10-day rite of passage that introduces students to the military discipline, drill and physical fitness expectations required of them. Another episode the Post mentioned was a 2017 photo depicting the school’s commandant of cadets dressed in a Halloween costume as President Donald Trump’s border wall with the words “No Cholos” – a slur against Mexicans.

“This culture is unacceptable for any Virginia institution in the 21st century, especially one funded by taxpayers. Virginians expect all universities — and particularly public universities established by the General Assembly — to be welcoming and inclusive, and to eschew outdated traditions that glamorize a history rooted in rebellion against the United States,” states the letter issued by state legislators, among them Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax; Attorney General Mark Herring; Speaker of the House Eileen Filler-Corn; Senate Majority Leader Richard Saslaw; House Majority Leader Charniele Herring; state Sen. and Senate President Louise Lucas; state Sen. Mamie Locke (head of the Senate Democratic Caucus); Del. Lamont Bagby (chair, Legislative Black Caucus); House Appropriations Committee Chair Del. Luke Torian; and Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee Chair Sen. Janet Howell.

“Black cadets at VMI have long faced repeated instances of racism on campus, including horrifying new revelations of threats about lynching, vicious attacks on social media, and even a professor who spoke fondly of her family’s history in the Ku Klux Klan — to say nothing of inconsistent application of the Institute’s Honor Code,” the letter also reads. “In addition, VMI cadets continue to be educated in a physical environment that honors the Confederacy and celebrates an inaccurate and dangerous ‘Lost Cause’ version of Virginia’s history. It is long past time to consign these relics to the dustbin of history.”

Northam, a VMI graduate, has focused on racial equity issues since a photo surfaced from his 1984 Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook page showing a person in blackface next to a person in a Klan robe. After initially admitting he was in the picture, Northam later recanted, but said he had once dressed as Michael Jackson and applied shoe polish to his face for a dance contest. Herring also admitted to wearing blackface to a party in his past; Fairfax has contended with allegations of sexual assault. In September, Fairfax announced that he was running for governor in 2021. Herring is running for reelection as attorney general. All three are Democrats.

In response to the Northam letter, Boland issued a letter of his own on Oct. 20, stating that he welcomed “an objective, independent review of VMI’s culture and the Institute’s handling of allegations of racism and/or discrimination.”

The letter states that administrators have already begun a review of nearly 30 operational elements and that the “way forward was thoroughly reviewed and discussed at the September 2020 Board of Visitors meeting and was endorsed as a path toward ensuring an Institute free from racism and discrimination.” It also states that “systemic racism doesn’t exist here and a fair and independent review will find that to be true.”

“The incidents detailed in The Washington Post article, several of which are many years old, had more to do with an individual’s lapse of judgment than they do with the culture of the institute,” the Boland letter reads. “Each one, as is the case with any allegation of racism or discrimination, was investigated thoroughly and appropriate action was meted out in a timely fashion. These incidents were perpetrated by few individuals and were in no way condoned by the institute.”

In a tweet on Oct. 24, former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder called on Northam “to immediately remove and replace the leadership [at VMI],”  including the board of visitors, or resign from office. Wilder was the nation’s first elected African American governor and the first Black governor in America since Reconstruction.

After the announcement of Peay’s resignation, Wilder tweeted, “It appears that my call has been met with the superintendent’s resignation. That is not enough, the culture at VMI needs to be changed. This should have been brought about by the Board of Visitors and still needs … to be done.”


Founded in 1839, VMI has been called “The West Point of the South,” and is the oldest state-supported military college in the country. Stonewall Jackson joined VMI’s faculty in 1851 as a professor of natural and experimental philosophy, a precursor to natural science.  During the Civil War, the Confederacy called on cadets to take part in military engagements, including the Battle of New Market, where 247 members of the VMI Corps of Cadets fought.

Famous VMI alumni include naval officer and explorer Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd Jr., General of the Army George Marshall Jr., and Lt. Gen. Lewis Burwell “Chesty” Puller, the most decorated Marine in American history.

VMI was the last U.S. military college to admit women after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 7-1 decision in June 1996 that it was unconstitutional for a school supported by public funds to exclude women.

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