The Virginia Military Institute (VMI) was founded in 1839 in Lexington, Virginia. The first women cadets enrolled in 1997.
In 2021 an investigative team from an independent law firm reported that sexual assault was prevalent at VMI yet it was inadequately addressed by the Institute. In the survey, 14 percent of female cadets reported being sexually assaulted at VMI. In some sexual assault cases, members of the VMI administration actively dissuaded victims from making reports, the investigation found. Cadets reported that VMI administrators have intimidated female cadets to reconsider assault reports, including by asking them to consider the impact on the male assailants’ careers.
As a result of the investigation, the university had a steep drop in applications and enrolled only 370 first-year students in 2022. This fall, nearly there are nearly 500 first-year students on campus. The incoming class has 71 women, just over 14 percent of all first-year students. This is a similar percentage of women students that existed prior to the investigation of institutional sexism and racism.