A group of black law students is demanding that the university in Lexington, Va., take a series of steps to expiate its Confederate heritage and the “dishonorable conduct” of Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general who served as the university’s president after the Civil War, The Washington Post reported.
Among other things, the students want the university to remove Confederate flags from the chapel, ban Confederate sympathizers and re-enactors from the campus on Virginia’s Lee-Jackson holiday, observe the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday by canceling class, and apologize for ties to slavery and for Lee’s conduct. The students pledged to undertake acts of civil disobedience if their demands were not met by September 1.
In response, the university’s president, Kenneth P. Ruscio, said he had asked a campus group to study of the history of African-Americans at the college. Black students constitute 3.5 percent of the enrollment at the university, which is named for both Lee and George Washington, who was an early benefactor.
Third-year law student Dominik Taylor, a descendent of slaves on his father’s side, said he felt betrayed by admissions representatives who touted the school’s diversity.
“They assured me it was a welcoming environment where everyone sticks together as a community,” Taylor said. “Then I came here and felt ostracized and alienated.”
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