Students Object To New College President, SC’s Lt Gov And Confederacy Fan
Glenn McConnell, the Lt. Gov. of South Carolina, was named the new president of The College of Charleston. Students are protesting the move because of McConnell’s love of the Confederacy.
Students at the college, along with the NAACP, had expressed opposition to McConnell’s candidacy for weeks prior to the Board of Trustee’s vote. Protests had been held, and signs had been posted around campus reading “Go home Glenn” and “No Confederates for President.” McConnell’s opponents cited, and continue to cite, his lack of experience in higher education and his longstanding and public enthusiasm for the Confederacy.
The Confederacy thing is no secret. McConnell is a longtime Civil War re-enactor. On the biography page he has up on his personal website, under “community involvement/clubs,” McConnell lists the Sons of Confederate Veterans — a national organization “devoted exclusively to commemorating and honoring Confederate soldiers.” And for years, until it closed in 2009, McConnell and his brother ran a Charleston store that specialized in Confederate memorabilia.
Outside South Carolina, McConnell is perhaps most famous for an incident that occurred in 2010, when the National Federation of Republican Women held a board of directors meeting in Charleston. McConnell, who was then the Republican president pro tempore of the state Senate and considered perhaps the most powerful politician in the state, appeared at “Southern Experience” event dressed in a Confederate uniform, and posed for a picture with two black people who appeared to be dressed as slaves.