VMI responds to cadets’ sexist, racist online posts

WASHINGTON – A series of derogatory online posts that apparently came from Virginia Military Institute cadets has the school scrambling for explanations amidst outrage.

The posts on website, Quickmeme.com, include comments of a sexual nature against individual female cadets and others directed at minorities.

VMI spokesman Stewart MacInnis says the school has blocked the site from school computers and officials are talking to cadets.

He says it’s not the image they want to present.

“The institute is what they make of it and right now what people are seeing is not very impressive,” MacInnis says.

The Washington Post reports one of the posts features a photo of General J.H. Binford Peay III, superintendent of the institute, with the caption “1600 lonely males … blocks all porn.”

VMI is particularly sensitive about the posts about female cadets which now make up 10 percent of the student body. The school was forced to go co-ed in 1997.

MacInnis says they have asked that Quickmeme.com remove the offensive post. It hasn’t happened yet.

WTOP’s Hank Silverberg contributed to this story. Follow Hank and WTOP on Twitter.

(Copyright 2012 by WTOP. All Rights Reserved.)

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