LEXINGTON, Va. — Inside the basketball arena Saturday at the Virginia Military Institute, parents and their high school graduates exchanged farewells and stoic hugs. The young men and women had just been ordered to "fall in" as freshmen "rats" and stand in formation as the newest members of VMI's Corps of Cadets.

Matriculation Day and the start of Hell Week make up a thrilling, nerve-racking start to the academic year at the nation's oldest state-supported military college. The pageantry and trepidation among freshmen mark the beginning of what's known on campus as the "Rat Line," a months-long period of intense physical training and verbal abuse.

For this year's Matriculation Day, though, another feeling complemented the day's mood: relief.

After suffering a steep drop in applications and luring only about 370 freshmen in 2022, VMI attracted this year a "rat mass" of just under 500, said school spokesman Bill Wyatt. The larger number of freshmen means that VMI's overall student body is about 1,600 students, up from 1,500 the previous academic year, and inching upward to 1,750, its full capacity.

The restoration of VMI's freshman class to a larger size will reduce some of the college's financial pain caused by last year's enrollment drop. Earlier this year, the plunge prompted the college — which received $29 million in state funds for this academic year — to forecast budget shortfalls in the millions over the next three years and debate the possible cutting of some of its Division I sports teams. (Wyatt, the VMI spokesman, said there are no serious discussions at the moment of eliminating any of the school's athletic teams.)

The concern over VMI's enrollment has also coincided with tensions between the school and many of its alumni over the college's recent diversity reforms. Over the past several years, the college has been under a spotlight for its treatment of minorities and women. In late 2020, then-Gov. Ralph Northam (D), a VMI alumnus, ordered an independent investigation into the college's culture and racial climate. The probe, conducted by the Barnes & Thornburg law firm, concluded in June 2021 that the college suffered from "institutional racism and sexism."

Since Northam ordered the investigation, the nearly 184-year-old college appointed its first Black superintendent, Cedric T. Wins, a retired two-star Army major general who graduated from VMI in 1985. The school, whose students fought and died for the Confederacy, also conducted a sweeping review of its Confederate tributes on campus, and, among other decisions, removed from its parade grounds a statue of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson, a former VMI professor who enslaved six people. The college's cadets are also now required to take an annual 50-minute diversity training.

Still, some of those reforms have been resisted by many of the school's older, white alumni. Several graduates from decades ago formed a political action committee called the Spirit of VMI, which vehemently pushed back against the college's creation of a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) office. The group's chairman, Matt Daniel, a White alumnus who graduated with Wins in 1985, has argued on the group's website that DEI "promotes racial division" and that equity is "based on an authority's subjective engineering of equal outcomes."

Earlier this year, VMI changed the name of the diversity office to Diversity, Opportunity and Inclusion to match the title of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin's office in Richmond. In April, the governor's chief diversity officer Martin D. Brown, a Black Republican, delivered a speech on campus for an "inclusive excellence" training for VMI's staff and faculty and declared that "DEI is dead." In response, the state's NAACP and Black lawmakers in Virginia's General Assembly called for his resignation.

But the Spirit of VMI cheered Brown's remarks. And Brown has remained in the job.

Now, the PAC is urging VMI's new freshman class to pay respect to Confederate leaders.

Just days before Matriculation Day, the PAC published on its website an "Open Letter to the Rat Mass." The letter, written by Joe Elie, a VMI alumnus, invoked the chapel at adjacent Washington and Lee University that used to be named in honor of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, and told VMI's rats: "Don't walk past Lee Chapel without saluting. That is a tradition I still abide by and no one's going to tell me I'm wrong. Visit Stonewall's gravesite in uniform."

The letter — which included links to donate to the PAC — also told VMI freshmen that Jackson's statue used to stand on VMI's campus because "he was a great general, a model of Christian virtue."

In the latest issue of the PAC's newsletter, the group also appeared to mock the VMI admissions office by awarding it a "dart" on a dart board.

"To VMI admissions. Sorry to see the Open Borders Policy spread to VMI," the newsletter said.

For this year's admissions cycle, VMI received 1,221 applications and admitted 988 people, turning down 222, while 11 withdrew their applications. Wyatt said that 491 people — 420 men, 71 women — accepted their appointments, including one student who had been readmitted from a prior class. About 85.5 percent of this year's rats are men, and about 14.5 percent are women.

The college did not yet have a breakdown of how many of the new cadets identified as white, Black or belonged to other racial minorities.

The college didn't enroll its first Black students until 1968. The first female cadets weren't allowed to matriculate until 1997.

Wyatt cited multiple reasons VMI was able to boost the number of applications and size of the rat mass this year. School officials and alumni hosted or attended more than 210 recruiting events, the most its admissions team has traveled in one application cycle. The school, he added, focused on geographic areas with larger populations of military families and low-income or minority students. Recruiters also targeted awardees of ROTC scholarships and other students eager to attend a military college, but who weren't familiar with VMI at all or as much as the federal service academies.

As VMI looks ahead to the next admissions cycle, Wyatt said the school hopes to decrease its acceptance rate by boosting the number of applications. For the first time in the college's history, high school seniors applying to become VMI freshmen next year will be allowed to use the online Common App. Wyatt said the Common App will "help make VMI more accessible, especially to out of state and underrepresented groups."

Late last month, VMI also announced that it won nearly $4 million over four years in extra state funds to help increase its enrollment and performance of low-income and Pell Grant-eligible students. The grant money will, among other things, provide scholarships for incoming freshmen to attend a voluntary four-week "summer transition program" during which they undergo physical training, live in the barracks and take one academic class.

VMI also hopes to offer for the second year in a row its "Call to Duty" scholarships that cover the cost of housing and food for cadets who are recipients of three- or four-year ROTC scholarships. In a recent board of visitors executive meeting, Wins called the scholarships a "huge game changer" that helped increase this year's freshman class enrollment.

On Saturday, just two hours before Hell Week would begin in the barracks, dozens of cadets and their families entered the adjacent VMI chapel. They filed into the pews and faced one of the school's most cherished historic artifacts: an enormous oil on canvas painting depicting the VMI cadets fighting for the Confederacy during the Battle of New Market in 1864.

"This is a big moment," VMI chaplain John P. Casper told the attendees. "We're going to pray over the rats."

In the down time, freshmen paced around the parade ground, chatting with their parents or new friends.

Josephus Johnson-Koroma, a freshman from Roanoke who is Black, said he hadn't heard of VMI until recently through a friend of his father's. He'd gotten wind of some of the accounts of racism allegations on campus, but he wasn't at all fazed.

"It's something I'm used to already," he said.

He added that VMI appealed to him on a broad level.

"It would build better structure for me," he said. "And I would feel strong."

An hour later, the freshmen and their parents filled out another space — Cameron Hall, the basketball arena.

"You have come to VMI to succeed. We did not bring you here to fail," Wins told the rats. "And we have every expectation that you will make it through your years at VMI, grow in the bonds of brotherhood and graduate in a very few short years."

Finally, it was time. Parents and their children fidgeted and prepared for the hurried hugs. Johnson-Koroma sat with his parents and sister high up in the stands. One by one, each company was summoned. A for Alpha, B for Bravo and so on. Then Johnson-Koroma's letter came: H.

"Hotel company rats, fall in!" the Hotel company commander yelled.

Then, Johnson-Koroma embraced his family. He scampered down to the arena floor and stood ramrod straight with his fellow Hotel rats. Moments later, the entire rat mass marched out of the building and up to the barracks. Friends and family followed behind.

Up at the barracks, parents took photos and videos of their children marching toward the entrance. "Get it!" and "Don't smile!" they yelled.

But once the rats were inside the barracks, the gate was shut, and all that anyone could hear was yelling.

previous coverage

• VMI’s chief diversity officer resigns amid alumni war over DEI
• Youngkin hails VMI graduates, avoiding acrimony over DEI and equity
• ‘DEI is dead’: At VMI, Youngkin’s diversity chief slams diversity, equity, inclusion
• At VMI, two classmates — one Black, one white — war over school’s future
• VMI's first Black superintendent under attack by conservative alumni group

related stories

• Military academies use affirmative action. Will the Supreme Court stop them?