Collegiate Times

I would like to respond to the column "Push to further diversity initiatives on Tech's campus" (CT, March 26). In this column, the author makes some inflammatory statements regarding Claudius Lee and digs up the notion that Lee Hall should be renamed.

Somehow the author seems to think that the revelation of a yearbook containing references to the Ku Klux Klan is news in 2009 when the yearbook was written in 1896 and brought to prominent attention in 1997.

A quick Web search shows a statement by President Torgersen (who was university president in 1997) on the matter. At Torgersen's request a thorough investigation was done, and it was determined that the KKK was not active during Claudius Lee's days as a student.

To quote Torgersen, "There was no known Klan activity in Virginia during Claudius Lee's days as a student. In fact, the Klan had been dormant during the two-and-a-half decades preceding the yearbook's publication.

A second wave of Klan activity, even more terrorist and destructive than the earlier version, began more than a decade after the offensive material was published." The fact of the matter is that Lee served this university for 63 years as part of the electrical engineering faculty, and that should merit some praise.

The idea that Lee was the only person at Virginia Tech with racist views in the late 1800s would be, at best, ignorant of history.

There is no documentation that I can find of him ever acting violently or illegally at all while as a student or a member of the faculty.

Perhaps we should condemn Lee for his racist viewpoints and for having poor judgment in putting something so offensive into the yearbook, but it must not have offended everyone if the publisher saw it fit to go to print.

Perhaps, though, if we really examine the university's history, we will realize that racism was institutionalized here for nearly 90 years, as it was in much of the south.

It was not until 1953 that the first black student was admitted to Virginia Tech, and when Irving Peddrew arrived in Blacksburg, he was hardly welcomed with open arms ready to embrace diversity. Peddrew was strongly "encouraged" to not attend the annual ring dance his junior year.

It seems Lee has been thrown under the bus as the token figure for an institution with a history of racism. Should we also rename all buildings named after presidents who presided over administrations that did not allow black students to enroll?

Virginia Tech would certainly look a lot different without the names McBryde, Barringer, Eggleston, Hutcheson and, yes, even Burruss, on buildings. While Newman was the president over the first administration to allow blacks to attend, he can hardly be considered a champion for integration because of the hardships endured by the pioneering black students.

As much as this article wishes to condemn Tech's outreach to minorities, it must be recognized that Mississippi State did not admit its first black student until 1965, the University of Alabama did not admit blacks until 1956 (and after riots the first black student there left before graduating), the University of Georgia did not enroll a black student until 1961, and Clemson did not enroll a black student until 1963.

The sentiment that blacks were not worthy of admission to southern schools pervaded the white southern viewpoint at the time. It was not right, and we know that now. But if you view history through the eyes of those who lived it, acceptance was far more radical of a viewpoint than rejection.

If we all approach history with the view that we must never honor those who had racist views I suppose we need to tear down the Washington and Jefferson memorials. We'll have to change the pictures on the majority of our currency, too.

The men we honor in such a way were, after all, slave owners. I will conclude with the wise words of Torgersen from his 1997 statement: "I do not believe that institutions can reconcile regrettable aspects of our histories by trying to change the record left to us by the past. What we can do, and will do, is take responsibility for stewardship in our own time."

Ricky Castles

Ph. D. Candidate

Computer Engineering