On April 14, students of Georgetown University passed a referendum that would compensate descendants of those enslaved by the university, when they were experiencing financial hardship in its early days. According to their student newspaper, The Hoya, 66 percent of students voted in favor of the reparations referendum.
The referendum was meant to provide the first installment of an amendment: reparations for the amount of wealth generated to keep the doors open. To reconcile the pain the descendants have felt in their family history, students campaigned to have a $27.12 increase in tuition to be set aside for them in a charitable donation, to groups organized by Georgetown’s enslaved descendants.
When Jesuit priests founded Georgetown in 1789, they were one of the largest owners of enslaved people. They used the money from their plantations to keep the university running. By the beginning of the 19th century, their plantations had run out of money. The Jesuit priests decided to sell over 200 enslaved people to Louisiana planters. They sold them for $115,000, which amounts to $3 million today. This sale has allowed Georgetown University to remain open to this day.
As progressive and necessary this concept of reparations can be, it places the responsibility of making amends on the financial pockets of students instead of the university. Yet, if passed by the university’s board of directors, the reparation fund will be the first in the nation to acknowledge enslavement as a reputable amend, while removing themselves from any implementation of their own offense.
When the students came up with the idea for reparations, they wanted to do something the university failed to do for so many years. Georgetown University barely acknowledged their involvement in enslavement until students protested the names of slave owners on their campus buildings. After Georgetown renamed the buildings, a professor and their student researchers dug deeper to find the descendants and released a report of their findings. Since then, the university has released a statement saying they recognized the sale, and apologized for their legacy.
However, apologies were not enough for the student organizers, nor were they sufficient for the descendants of the enslaved.
Prior to the students’ referendum, Georgetown University reconciled with the descendants by offering them an advantage in admissions. According to GU272 Descendants Association, only five descendants have registered for education towards undergraduate and master’s degrees at the university. Some concerns about using legacy as a form of reparations are that not every descendant has aspirations to be educated through Georgetown, or through higher education, leaving this form of reparations unusable.
Despite this, Georgetown is the only university that has taken a step towards offering anything. Other universities have sold black enslaved people to finance their institutions and have yet to offer any form of reparations, let alone acknowledge their enslavement pasts. Princeton’s first nine university presidents owned black enslaved people. Columbia University released a report this year that its first ten presidents also owned black enslaved people. Given that not that many black people get admitted to their schools anyway, it’s not a surprise their students have not campaigned for a referendum for reparations themselves.
Enslavement's lasting effects are common knowledge, yet the United States government make no steps toward reparations. Many presidential candidates are speaking out about it and have even incorporated it into their campaigns for the 2020 election. For example, 2020 presidential candidate Kamala Harris has supported reparations for black communities and even suggested increased mental health services to combat trauma as a form to implement.
Cory Booker filed a bill last week that would form a commission to “study the issue and propose solutions that [would] finally begin to right the economic scales of past harms.”
Former President Barack Obama did not support reparations when in office. It is estimated that between $5.9 to $14.2 trillion will be given out to descendants of black enslaved people if reparations were carried out nationwide, making it a big pushback from politicians. Given that slavery funded the present economy, this number does not seem far off, and would possibly require an overhaul of our economic system.
Black students who organized Georgetown's reparations referendum did what many people in higher institutional positions have yet to do: pure direct action.
Now, check this out:
Pay What You Owe: Why The Bill For Reparations Is Past Due And Requires A Real Plan
Senator Booker Introduces Slavery Reparations Bill To The Senate
New Democratic Presidential Contender Wants $100 Billion In Slavery Reparations
