Image Lt. Gov. Glenn F. McConnell, expected to become the next president of the college. Credit... Rainier Ehrhardt/Associated Press

Although Mr. McConnell has deep ties to the college — he is an alumnus who once led the student body and later represented Charleston in the State Senate for decades — he has no experience as an academic administrator. More troubling to some of his detractors, he has supported keeping the Confederate battle emblem on the grounds of the State House, participates in Civil War re-enactments and once ran a store here that sold, among other items, souvenirs related to the Confederacy.

“I’m not saying he’s the world’s most virulent racist, but his unrepentance reflects a certain kind of prejudice for people of color,” said Matthew R. Rabon, a junior studying philosophy who said Mr. McConnell’s actions could also reflect “a severe lack of judgment.”

But to Mr. McConnell and his supporters, his record has been willfully distorted and misinterpreted. Backers point to his efforts to direct lottery proceeds to historically black colleges and universities, and to his work on a monument to black history.

“Judge me by my record, not by someone’s rhetoric,” Mr. McConnell said in a lengthy interview on Monday at a Charleston McDonald’s. “It’s easy to mischaracterize someone rather than understand them.”

And Mr. McConnell, who is expected to inherit a college where black students made up 6 percent of the undergraduate enrollment last fall, dismissed charges that he is a racist as “totally fictitious.”