Part of the news story:
"“It was put on the agenda on July 3 and it was voted on July 9. The present chair of the school board was on the school board then and he was left out of it. They worked around him and they voted 5 to 1, his was the only vote against changing the name,” said Mike Scheibe, a Shenandoah County Parent.
Brandy Rutz is one of three current school board members who was elected after the renaming. She said there was a major problem with how it was handled.
“I think that had it been done differently, even if the name Stonewall Jackson would have lost out, the community would have been okay with it. But they feel it was forced upon them with no input at all,” said Rutz.
James Thomas is an alum of Stonewall Jackson High School who graduated in 1968. He said he believes that the majority of the county was not happy with the name changes.
“Everybody that I know locally in our community wanted the name to stay the same. So now they created all this division and instead of spending money on the education of children they wasted it on changing the name of schools,” said Thomas.
Thomas was not happy with the renaming.
“A few loud people can be woke and because they were doing it in other places, ‘Well, we’ll do it too’ and it was hurtful and it was wrong and it should be made right,” he said.
Shenandoah County District One Supervisor Josh Stephens said he hopes the board will use a survey of parents similar to the one it used when deciding to make masks optional in schools if it does consider changing the names back.
“If the board is going to consider the restoration of the names, I would like to see them get more public input this time. Turn it into a process where we can get good data,” he said."
My son is graduating from VMI. They moved the Stonewall Jackson statue, took his name off of Jackson Arch, and removed his name from the quote over the main barracks entrance. No one wanted the changes... it was pushed on everyone by a handful of woke political operatives. They also cancelled the Newmarket charge (cadet oath) and the reenactment. Bastards.
That's unbelievable. I do have to say, though, I had a couple of VMI grads who worked for me many years ago and it took a while to get the liberal crap out of their heads that had been put there by their profs. I was pretty astonished because I thought any military school would be conservative. Good luck to your son! You must be so proud of him.
Those of you not from Virginia may not know Jackson was a professor at VMI before the Civil War. The charge he's talking about was during the Battle of New Market, when cadets from VMI, some in their young teens, fought for the Confederacy.
There are some idiot leftist professors there... but still some good, solid ones. My son is an engineering major and most leftists are in the humanities. The pendulum swung so far so fast with the attempt to takeover the school and erase history that that the pushback has been hard too. I am hopeful the pendulum is reversing. The battle of Newmarket is interesting... the cadets were called on to come and assist the Confederates while they were still students, because the fight was so near. They got sent in, and I believe were the reason the Union got pushed back. Their young age and bravery were remarkable and I believe four of them were killed. I could ramble on but I won't... we're in Lexington this weekend for graduation! :)
The Confederates were scrambling to put together enough men to fend off the Union advance, so a brigade of students were brought in. I know some were killed, not sure about the number. Guess who else was there among the Confederates? Gen. George Patton's grandfather. New Market Battlefield isn't too far from Lexington, right off I-81 if you want to see it.
My son took his oath there and participated in the reenactment... his might have been the last class... he graduates Monday and took the oath fall of 2018. Class of '23 may have... then covid, then wokeness, now they have removed it all. What is fantastically symbolic is the quote in barracks.... for ages it has read, "You may be whatever you resolve to be. -Stonewall Jackson." They whited out his name with paint under the quote last yead... but it was raised engraved lettering... so you can still see it. I love it. :)
Great! I'm surprised W&L hasn't tried to remove Lee from their name. Hopefully some of this nonsense will be reversed one of these days. Oh, BTW, there's a huge statue of Jackson at the Manassas Battlefield if you're ever there. Your son might like to see it. That's assuming some jackass hasn't decided to pull it down. I'm sure he knows all about Gen. Bee naming Jackson "Stonewall" at the first battle.