Conservative voices in Lexington carry a new cry, “Build no wall,” not on the southern U.S. border, but inside the University Chapel at Washington and Lee University.
The university’s effort to erect a wall inside the chapel that would shield a statue of one of its former presidents, Robert E. Lee, from public view is the latest focus of an ongoing campus struggle over past, present and future.
The statue of Lee reclining, asleep and dressed in his Confederate military uniform has occupied an alcove behind the chapel’s rostrum since 1883. For decades it was surrounded by Confederate battle flags, all plainly visible to generations of university event attendees.
However, the flags are gone from the chapel, along with portraits of W&L’s patriarchs George Washington and Lee, as the privately funded university, which for much of its existence was all-male and all-white, grapples with its 21st-century identity.
Overall, its current 1,860 undergraduate population is more racially diverse and split evenly between male and female students.
After a vigorous debate among students, faculty and alumni over the cultural legacy of its slave-owning namesakes, the university’s board of trustees voted in 2021 not to change its name. Additionally, the board announced it had officially renamed ‘Lee Chapel’ as ‘University Chapel’ and would “approve interior changes to restore its unadorned design and physically separate the auditorium” from the memorial sculpture, Recumbent Lee.
In an update published in September, the trustee board confirmed plans to physically split the building, creating “two separate, publicly accessible spaces: one for university events and the other for the study of history.”
Fresh battle lines were redrawn when the university submitted those architectural revisions. Lexington’s building official, Steve Paulk, determined W&L’s wall design posed unsafe access issues. On Oct. 4 he denied the university’s building permit application for the construction.
There was no mention in Paulk’s report of any cultural or historic issue as part of his decision. Instead, he said the wall as schemed “reduces the safety level in the Chapel assembly.”
The university appealed the decision Oct. 18, and the case was heard Monday evening by Lexington’s building code appeals panel.
The hearing began in a small community room in Lexington’s city hall, which quickly overflowed with people and was moved to a more spacious room in the city’s firehouse.
After hearing comments from the public, as well as remarks from Paulk and the university’s architect for the project, the building code board voted unanimously to uphold Paulk’s determination.
“The place is woefully inadequate in the number of exits,” board chairman H.E. Ravenhorst said. “If that were addressed, then all this wouldn’t be a problem. The wall could go anywhere we want it.”
Kamron M. Spivey, a W&L student, expressed concerns that the construction of a wall would make the space less safe for occupants in the case of a mass shooting.
“Just last night, there were three people murdered in a college mass shooting,” Spivey told the board, referring to the shooting of University of Virginia football players on Sunday. “Confining the exit […] would allow potentially a shooter to come in and have hundreds of people potentially take fire. That’s a dangerous predicament to put ourselves in.”
Spivey is a junior at the university, where he serves as president of a student organization for historical preservation and regularly publishes articles in the W&L Spectator, a student-run publication.
Like Spivey, an organization called The Generals Redoubt has no interest in building the wall. The group of W&L alumni and parents is committed to reestablishing “institutions and leaders” of W&L “which reflect our community’s best values and traditions,” according to a mission statement.
On the Redoubt website’s homepage, an article by 1964 W&L graduate Kenneth G. Everett advocates for “protecting access” to the statue.
“Precisely because the Valentine statue infused the Chapel with Lee’s legacy more powerfully than any other feature of the building, it has become the primary target in the Board [of Trustee]’s campaign of desecrating the Chapel,” the article reads, “making the issue of the statue the most hotly contested ground upon which [The Generals Redoubt] and others are fighting against the Board’s moves, ground indeed upon which the whole battle to save the Chapel may be won or lost.”
A billboard sponsored by The Generals Redoubt sits in a field along U.S. 11 south of Lexington. It reads, “Build No Wall!” and depicts the Recumbent Lee statue through an opening in a brick wall.
The Generals Redoubt also purchased an ad in Lexington’s weekly newspaper with remarks from the group’s president, 1963 W&L graduate Thomas P. Rideout. “Robert E. Lee is an important part of the city’s legacy and brand,” Rideout’s message reads. “If the Chapel’s presence is not maintained and coupled with a discussed change in the University’s name, the economic consequences for tourism will shrink over time.”
The architectural review board must send notification of its decision to both the city and the university within seven days of the hearing, Lexington’s planning and development director Arne Glaeser said Tuesday. Then, the university has 21 days to appeal the local board’s decision to the State Building Code Technical Review Board.
–roanoke.com
