page_title: Virginia Tech
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Virginia Tech / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Burruss Hall at Virginia Tech.
context_page_description: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, commonly known as Virginia Tech and by the initials VT and VPI, is a public, land-grant, research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. It also has educational facilities in six regions statewide and a study-abroad site in Riva San Vitale, Switzerland. Through its Corps of Cadets ROTC program, Virginia Tech is also designated as one of six senior military colleges in the United States.
  Virginia Tech offers 280 undergraduate and graduate degree programs to some 34,400 students and manages a research portfolio of $522 million, placing it 46th among universities in the U.S. for research expenditures and the only Virginia school listed among the top 50. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". Virginia Tech is the state's second-largest public university by enrollment. The deadliest mass shooting on an American college campus occurred on campus in 2007, during which a student fatally shot 32 other students and faculty members and wounded 23 other people.
context_section_description: In 1872, with federal funds provided by the Morrill Act of 1862, the Virginia General Assembly purchased the facilities of Preston and Olin Institute, a small Methodist school for boys in Southwest Virginia's rural Montgomery County. That same year, 250 acres (100 ha) of the adjoining Solitude Farm including the house and several farm buildings on the estate were acquired for $21,250 from Robert Taylor Preston, a son of Governor of Virginia, James Patton Preston. The commonwealth incorporated a new institution on the site, a state-supported land-grant military institute named Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College.
  Virginia Tech's first student, Addison "Add" Caldwell registered on October 1, 1872, after hiking over 25 miles from his home in Craig County, Virginia. A statue, located in the Upper Quad of campus commemorates Add's journey to enroll. First-year cadets and their training cadre re-enact Addison Caldwell's journey every year in the Caldwell March. They complete the first half of the 26-mile march in the fall and the second half in the spring.
  The first five presidents of Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College served in the Confederate States Army or the Confederate government during the Civil War as did many of its early professors including the first Commandant, James H. Lane, a VMI graduate and former Confederate General who taught civil engineering and commerce at the college and is the namesake of Lane Hall, one of the oldest buildings on campus, built in 1888. Its third president, Thomas Nelson Conrad, was a notorious Confederate spy who ran a covert intelligence gathering operation from a home in the heart of Washington, D.C. His wartime exploits included among other things, hatching a plot to assassinate the Commanding General of the United States Army, Winfield Scott, that was vetoed by the Confederate government who feared that the elderly, infirm, and obese Scott would be replaced by someone more fit for command; sneaking into the War Office during lunch hour to lift copies of documents describing General McClellan's battle plans for the Peninsula Campaign, a large-scale offensive by the Union Army to capture the Confederate capitol at Richmond from the desk of a friend who was a double agent; conspiring to kidnap U.S. President Abraham Lincoln from the White House; and jumping from a speeding train to escape after being captured by Union forces. Its sixth president and the namesake of Barringer Hall, Paul Brandon Barringer, was the son of Confederate General Rufus Barringer and a nephew of Confederate Generals Stonewall Jackson and Daniel Harvey Hill.
  In a nod to this southern heritage the Confederate Battle Flag was traditionally waved by cheerleaders at Virginia Tech football games and the Highty-Tighties played Dixie as a fight song when the Hokies scored a touchdown. A large Confederate flag also hung inside Cassell Coliseum where Virginia Tech basketball games are played. Since 1963, "Skipper", a replica of a Civil War cannon has been fired at football games by members of the Corps of Cadets when the team scores. The Confederate Flag was also prominently featured on all Virginia Tech class rings. The display of the Confederate flag at athletic events ended in the late 1960s after Marguerite Harper, a black woman attending Virginia Tech on a Rockefeller Scholarship for culturally disadvantaged students, was elected to the student senate during her sophomore year and made a successful resolution to end the practice. Following the resolution there was a large demonstration in opposition to the removal of the Confederate flag. The campus was covered in Confederate flags and Dixie was blasting from dormitory windows. Harper and her white roommate received hate mail and threatening phone calls but the resolution stood and the display of the rebel flag ended in 1969. The Confederate flag on Virginia Tech class rings became optional in 1972 and could be left off of the ring at the student's request. The Confederate flag has since been removed from class ring designs entirely.
caption: Virginia Tech's Burruss Hall
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