Second VMI Board of Visitors member resigns after vote to remove superintendent

The president of the VMI Board of Visitors, John Adams, a Glenn Youngkin appointee, abruptly resigned from the board on Thursday, reportedly citing personal reasons that have not been made public.

Adams, appointed to the Board of Visitors in 2022, oversaw the effort to bring to an end the tenure of Maj. Gen. Cedric T. Wins, the school’s first Black superintendent, whose contract was up for renewal in June.

The Board of Visitors voted 10-6 at a special meeting on Feb. 28 against extending Wins’s contract.

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ICYMI

• VMI Board votes against extending contract of school’s first Black superintendent
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In the days leading up to the special meeting, Youngkin used the emergency-appointment process to install two new members on the Board of Visitors, 1984 VMI alum Stephen G. Reardon of Richmond, an attorney with Spotts Fain and a small-potatoes Republican donor, and Jonathan Hartsock, a 2000 alum of VMI, who served as the school’s deputy commandant before joining the office staff of Sixth District MAGA Congressman Ben Cline in the summer of 2023.

The use of the emergency-appointment process suggested that there was a hurry up and fire the Black guy element to the Board of Visitors vote.

Wins had been under constant fire from White MAGA VMI alums because, one, he’s Black – duh! – and two, because he was hired in 2020 amidst a controversy sparked by reporting from The Washington Post about “a lynching threat and other anecdotes from Black students alleging bigotry on the campus in Lexington.”

A month into Wins’s tenure, the school removed a statue honoring Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson, and following the release in 2021 of a state-commissioned report that detailed the “racist and sexist culture” at the school, Wins oversaw the introduction of a DEI program at VMI, and initiated a review of the school’s numerous tributes to the Confederacy.

This was not going to work going forward, with everybody in Richmond bending the knee to the blatantly racist policies of the Trump administration, which has made rooting out DEI programs that opened up access to educational opportunity for people of color, women and the LGBTQ+ population a top priority.

Adams is the second VMI Board of Visitors member to step down since the Feb. 28 vote, joining Tom Watjen, a Terry McAuliffe and Ralph Northam appointee, who cited “very mixed feelings” over the vote in a statement announcing his resignation.

Youngkin, meanwhile, announced on Friday a new appointee, José J. Suárez, a VMI alum who now lives in Florida.