One of the United States’ most established military colleges has seen enrollment plummet in recent years as it has engaged in what some alumni believe is heavy-handed, divisive, diversity and inclusion-focused cadet programming.

Virginia Military Institute (VMI), founded in 1839, is the nation’s oldest military college. The public military college has experienced a single-year freshmen enrollment decline of 25%, from 496 cadets in 2021 to just 375 in 2022.

In 2020, the school enjoyed its highest freshmen enrollment ever, with 522 cadets.

The school’s superintendent, retired Army Maj. Gen. Cedric T. Wins, has blamed the drop in enrollment on several factors, including things such as declining birth rates to the ideological divide among the alumni base.

The divide among alums informs VMI’s response to allegations of discrimination and mistreatment of cadets of color.

In late 2020, then-Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, who was embroiled in a 2019 scandal when photos of him in blackface surfaced, wrote a letter to VMI’s governing board announcing an investigation into the treatment of black cadets.

Northam, a 1981 VMI graduate, opened his letter decrying “the clear and appalling culture of ongoing structural racism at the Virginia Military Institute.” The law firm hired to conduct the investigation produced a report that claimed VMI suffered from a campus culture of racism and sexism.

VMI then amplified its so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” education and training efforts for cadets in what Wins believed would empower them “to gain strength through diversity, acceptance by inclusion.”

First, the school created a new, required course in the 2021-2022 school year for all cadets that included “issues related to racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

VMI’s library also created an entire section of controversial resources. These include works such as Ibram X. Kendi’s “How to Be an Antiracist,” Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility,” and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me.”

The military college even published an official Glossary of Terms featuring twenty pages of words and definitions, including “systemic racism,” “transphobia,” “social justice,” “microaggression,” and more.

Cadets are expected to participate in training sessions where they are asked to contemplate, “How have you benefited from adherence to your gender role?”

The fight between Wins and school alumni has spilled over into public forums.

In a social media post, Wins addressed a specific alum by name in a lengthy missive in which he declared, “You have no understanding of DEI or what it means.”

Wins further “categorically” rejected the idea that Critical Race Theory or similar ideology had taken root at VMI. He attributed falling enrollment to “misinformation regarding our initiative for diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

He told the governing board, “The thought, the notion, the misinformation about the institute and what it’s doing or what it’s not doing with critical race theory is certainly having an impact, we believe.”

Regardless of Wins’ perspective, the reality is that enrollment has plummeted since VMI shifted towards prioritizing these DEI programs and initiatives.

As one alum claimed on social media, “Nobody wants a woke VMI.”