Northam Won’t Attend William & Mary Annual Ceremony

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The College of William & Mary on Monday said that the university and embattled Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam had agreed he would not attend the school’s annual celebration of its founding and the inauguration of its president.

The announcement comes after pro-Trump site Big League Politics published a photo of Northam’s medical school yearbook featuring a man wearing blackface standing with another man in a Ku Klux Klan robe.

“That behavior has no place in civil society – not 35 years ago, not today,” W&M president Katherine Rowe told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “It stands in stark opposition to William & Mary’s core values of equity and inclusion.”

On Friday, Northam said he was “deeply sorry” about the photo and claimed he was neither of the two men in the 1984 photo, but he did admit he wore blackface once that year as part of a Michael Jackson costume.

The governor has been rejecting calls to resign.

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