When Georgetown University students voted this spring to use student fees to pay reparations to descendants of the enslaved people Georgetown sold to keep its doors open in the 1800s, they made headlines in what’s become a national conversation on how to repay a very real debt owed to African Americans.
But student activists at the forefront of the issue are expressing their displeasure with the university after the school’s announcement this week that it planned to fund reparations not through student fees, but through donations.
Little Known Black History Fact: Ebony/Jet Magazines
As the New York Times reports, Georgetown announced that it planned to raise $400,000 to fund community health projects that would benefit the descendants of the 272 enslaved people the university sold in 1838 to keep Georgetown afloat.
The figure is about what would have been raised annually by student fees, according to the university—without requiring students to pay additional monies. Instead, Georgetown says, it will seek voluntary donations from members of the university community: alumni, professors, and students, as well as from philanthropists.
Georgetown President John DeGioia, in a statement, said that the school would “ensure that the initiative has resources commensurate with, or exceeding the amount that would have been raised annually through the student fee.”
