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Georgetown Will Give Admissions Preference to Descendants of Slaves It Benefitted From
Georgetown University, the nation’s oldest Catholic and Jesuit higher-education institution, announced plans to offer preferential admission to almost 300 descendants of slaves used to fund the school almost 200 years ago.
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The college wants local public schools to collaborate with Georgetown University to teach students about the university’s involvement with slavery; this would include an updated lesson plan with a focus on slavery in the local area, along with the university’s slave-holding ties, the recommendations report reveals.
The steps go further than those taken by other US universities that are confronting their past association with slavery, including Harvard, Brown, Princeton and the University of North Carolina.
The working group - a handpicked group of students, faculty, and alumni - was integral in coming up with the action plan announced on Wednesday.
“Georgetown, being a Catholic institution, really can’t escape the moral problem of that history, because it’s come to challenge its Catholic identity”, he said.
On Thursday, University President John J. DeGioia announced the working group’s plan for memory and reconciliation. The slaves were sent to plantations in Louisiana.
Georgetown University has made a decision to create a new institute to study slavery and will rename two of its buildings as it develops ways to address its past connections to the slave trade. The university said it will seek out the descendants of other slaves whose labor the university benefited from, as well, and also offer them preferential treatment in admissions.
“We know we’ve got work to do, and we’re going to take those steps to do so.”
Loyola University Maryland, also a Jesuit institution, said it had no connection to the Georgetown slave sale.
“I hope universities will look at Georgetown as a model”, Walker said.
Several other universities, including Brown, Harvard and the University of Virginia have already offered formal apologies for profiting from the slave culture.
Those ties go back almost two centuries, when the Washington, D.C., school sold 272 slaves and used the proceeds to pay off debt. Georgetown officials did not respond to a question about whether they kept a list of descendants.
The two buildings being renamed originally paid tribute to the Rev. Thomas F. Mulledy and the Rev. William McSherry, the college presidents involved in the 1838 sale.
Crystal Walker-a 2016 Georgetown alumna who was part of the working group-was one of the students who organized demonstrations on campus last fall, pushing for the buildings to be renamed and adding urgency to the working group efforts.
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Georgetown will offer an advantage in admissions to descendants of slaves with links to the school.