Georgetown University will offer an admissions edge to descendants of slaves.

[pnwmom]

This will apply to all the descendants of slaves whose labor benefited Georgetown, not just those sold.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/01/492223040/georgetown-will-offer-an-edge-in-admissions-to-descendants-of-slaves

Georgetown University will be offering an admissions edge to descendants of enslaved people sold to fund the school, officials announced on Thursday.

Jesuit priests connected to the private Catholic university sold 272 enslaved people in 1838, to pay off the university's massive debts. The men, women and children were sold to plantations in Louisiana; the university received the equivalent of $3.3 million, securing its survival.

A working group, created last year to explore Georgetown's historical ties to slavery, says even more slaves might have been sold in the 1830s to keep the school afloat.

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On Thursday, the university announced it would be doing just that — specifically, by treating the descendants of those enslaved people the same way it treats legacy students, applicants whose family members attended Georgetown.

The working group had also recommended that Georgetown explore the feasibility of offering financial assistance for those students as well. The university did not mention scholarships or financial aid for descendants of the enslaved.

Additionally, the school will be renaming two buildings — formerly named after the two university presidents who made the arrangements to sell slaves to fund the school. The buildings had been temporarily renamed to Freedom Hall and Memorial Hall while waiting for their final names.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/02/us/slaves-georgetown-university.html?emc=edit_na_20160901&nlid=68893759&ref=cta&_r=0

Mr. DeGioa’s decision to offer an advantage in admissions to descendants, similar to that offered to the children and grandchildren of alumni, is unprecedented, historians say. The preference will be offered to the descendants of all the slaves whose labor benefited Georgetown, not just the men, women and children sold in 1838.

More than a dozen universities — including Brown, Harvard and the University of Virginia — have publicly recognized their ties to slavery and the slave trade. But Craig Steven Wilder and Alfred L. Brophy, two historians who have studied universities and slavery, said they knew of none that had offered preferential status in admissions to the descendants of slaves.

Professor Wilder, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said Mr. DeGioia’s plans to address Georgetown’s history go beyond any initiatives enacted by a university in the past 10 years.

“It goes farther than just about any institution,” he said. “I think it’s to Georgetown’s credit. It’s taking steps that a lot of universities have been reluctant to take.”

But whether the initiatives result in meaningful change remains to be seen, he said. Professor Wilder cautioned that the significance of the preferential status in admissions would rest heavily on the degree to which Georgetown invested in outreach to descendants, including identifying them, making sure they are aware of the benefit’s existence and actively recruiting them to the university.