The superintendent of the Virginia Military Academy has resigned after stories of ongoing racism at the institution arose, with students and alumni detailing episodes that got little or no discipline from the administration, the Washington Post reports.
The 80-year old superintendent, J.H. Binford Peay III, a retired four-star Army general, tendered his resignation Monday from the 181-year-old military institution.
In a story published last Sunday, the Washington Post detailed ongoing episodes of racism at the university, which values its Confederate roots and the heroism of alumni who fought to preserve slavery in secessionist states.
The institutional racism include mandating cadets salute a story of Confederate general Stonewall Jackson, reenacting the Confederate charge during the battle of New Market and decorating the campus in Confederate flags on Jackson-Lee Day.
Additionally, Peay has been accused on looking the other way as officers within the corps of cadets threatened to lynch Black cadets and repeatedly use the n-word in addressing Blacks.
In one case, a white second-year called a Black student a “n****r” and told him he’d lynch him and use his body as a punching bag. Peay opted to suspend the sophomore instead of expelling him, which was the request of numerous student organizations.