VMI graduates sue alumni association, citing civil rights violations

A group of more than two dozen alumni of the Virginia Military Institute are suing the school’s alumni association over alleged violations of their civil rights, according to a complaint filed this month in federal court.

The 29 plaintiffs, who span four decades of attendance at VMI, claim that the institute and its alumni association have become so intertwined that VMI — a state-run military college in Lexington — essentially controls the alumni association. The alumni argue that their First and 14th amendment rights have been violated, and that the suspension of several alumni from the association earlier this year was done in retaliation for efforts to reform leadership of the association through voting.

The suit, filed in federal court in Lynchburg for the alumni by attorney Paul Curley, traces much of the relationship between VMI and its alumni organizations to a 2019 action that moved four alumni corporations — the Keydet Club, the VMI Foundation, the VMI Development Board and the VMI Alumni Association — under the umbrella of VMI Alumni Agencies.

The restructuring took place without approval of the alumni association members, the suit claims, and the VMI leadership took part in selecting the CEO of the umbrella organization. “In its essence, the 2019 restructuring was a corporate takeover of the VMIAA and Foundation by VMI, a state agency,” the complaint states. Another 2019 change affected alumni association members’ ability to vote by proxy, an action that the suit says violated their First Amendment rights.

The suit claims that between one-third and one-half of the school’s annual budget in recent years has come from the VMI Alumni Association and the VMI Foundation, which “makes VMI entirely dependent upon the VMIAA to operate.”

However, budget documents published by VMI for fiscal year 2024 show about 25% of the budget coming from VMI Alumni Agencies.

The group seeks reforms to the alumni association’s bylaws and elections, and for the current directors of the association to be replaced through a new election.

“VMIAA denies it acted inappropriately or has violated any of the plaintiffs’ rights,” VMI Alumni Agencies spokesperson Amy Goetz said in a statement Wednesday. The Gentry Locke law firm is representing the association, which has until July 23 to respond to the complaint.

Four alumni also represented by Curley filed a petition in Rockbridge County in 2023, claiming that the alumni association blocked them from obtaining contact information for alumni, which they needed to communicate with them ahead of an association meeting. A judge dismissed the petition, saying that the association was within its rights as a private organization to withhold member contact information, including email addresses. Three of the four plaintiffs in that petition have signed on to this new complaint.

Bob Morris , whose firm has sued VMI and who heads the foundation that supports the independent student newspaper, is one of the additional two dozen alumni who have signed on to the federal case. Morris is among eight alumni who have been suspended from the alumni association for allegedly using scraping technology to obtain email addresses of VMI alumni and using those addresses to solicit donations to independent fundraising efforts. All eight of the suspended alumni are plaintiffs in the case, including the estate of Peter McCrary, class of 1956, who died in February.

The complaint also asks for the court to restore the membership status of the eight suspended members.

“The complaint could have included at least hundreds of plaintiffs but that would have made many aspects of the case too unwieldy,” Curley said in an email Tuesday.

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