Showing posts with label Georgetown University. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Georgetown University. Show all posts

Sunday, November 13, 2022

Georgetown Launches $400,000 Annual Fund to Support Descendants of the Enslaved

Georgetown University launches $400,000 annual fund for projects supporting Descendants of the enslaved.

The Reconciliation Fund, inspired by a 2019 undergraduate student referendum, has begun accepting applications for community-based projects that aim to benefit the Descendants of the men, women, and children enslaved on Jesuit plantations in Maryland. Many of the Descendants live in and around Maringouin, Louisiana, where their ancestors were sold and forcibly moved to in 1838. The projects could include health and legal clinics, environmental justice projects, after-school and pre-college programs, and local history and memorialization projects.

In partnership with the university, a student committee and an advisory committee of Descendants have developed the application process for the Reconciliation Fund. Both groups will also review grant proposals for community-based projects and make recommendations to university leaders, who will select the final projects. To date, more than 500 alumni have provided financial support for the $400,000 annual fund.

“The Reconciliation Fund is a collective effort—an example of our community’s deep commitment to the possibilities that can emerge when we work in partnership to advance reconciliation,” said Georgetown President John J. DeGioia. “This project is one way the university is reckoning with the legacies of slavery that have shaped our past and to respond by advancing justice and equity in our present.”

Read more about The Reconciliation Fund here: https://www.georgetown.edu/news/georgetown-launches-400000-annual-fund-to-support-descendants-of-the-enslaved/

Saturday, December 11, 2021

Georgetown University names basketball court after John Thompson Jr.

Georgetown's home floor is now called John Thompson Jr. Court.

The university announced the naming of the court at Capital One Arena on Saturday in honor of the legendary leader and former coach who died last year at age 78.

Members of Thompson's family, as well as former Georgetown stars like Alonzo Mourning and Dikembe Mutombo, sat courtside to watch the program honor the Hoyas legend.

Thompson's biggest star at Georgetown, Patrick Ewing, is now entering his fifth season as head coach at his alma mater.

Known for coaching with a white towel on his right shoulder, Thompson was hired in 1972 after the Hoyas had just completed a three-win season. In 1984, he became the first Black head coach to lead a team to the national title.

While winning was important to Thompson, he never shied away from speaking his mind and standing up for social justice issues. On Saturday, the program was also awarded the first John Thompson Jr. Award—an honor given to a school that strives to fight prejudice and discrimination and advance positive societal change—by the Big East.

"Coach Thompson's impact on this program, this athletic department and this university will last forever," Georgetown athletic director Lee Reed said. "Knowing what he stood for, knowing the importance of the work he did in his lifetime, it's our responsibility collectively to not only uphold that but to continue to move that forward."

Friday, April 12, 2019

Georgetown Students Vote to Pay Reparations

As debate over reparations heats us, Georgetown University students voted Thursday by a large margin to impose a fee on themselves to pay reparations for the university's ties to slavery.

The student election commission announced the results early this morning. The measure attracted just under two-thirds of voters and passed, 2,541 to 1,304.

The measure calls for the university to start with a fee of $27.20 per semester in fall of 2020, "in honor of the 272 people sold by Georgetown," referring to the slaves sold by Jesuits to finance the university in its early days. The resolution says that proceeds from the fund "will be allocated for charitable purposes directly benefiting the descendants of the GU272 and other persons once enslaved by the Maryland Jesuits -- with special consideration given to causes and proposals directly benefiting those descendants still residing in proud and underprivileged communities,"

The proposed fee would be a tiny fraction of the price of attending Georgetown, where tuition alone is more than $55,000 this year.

While the measure is not binding on the university, the vote comes as Democratic presidential candidates have elevated the national debate over reparations. The vote also marks a potential shift in higher education.

In recent years, many colleges -- including Georgetown -- have conducted studies of their ties to slavery. Those studies have led to publications, academic conferences and monuments that honor the labor of slaves.

But the vote by Georgetown is the first move to have students pay reparations.

[SOURCE: INSIDEHIGHERED]

Thursday, April 20, 2017

Atoning for Slavery Ties, Georgetown University Renames Buildings

Georgetown University welcomed more than 100 descendants of the 272 men, women and children of the 1838 sale, orchestrated by the Maryland Jesuits, that benefited Georgetown University.

On Tuesday, April 18, with a Liturgy of Remembrance, Contrition and Hope, Georgetown University performed more penance for its 1838 sale of slaves, owned by the Maryland Jesuits, that directly benefited the fledging college financially.

There were mea culpas offered during a moving liturgy in Gaston Hall in the school's landmark Healy Building and at dedications in the Quadrangle, where newly renamed buildings stand near Dahlgren Chapel.

The two buildings, which once bore the names of the 19th-century Jesuit priests who managed the deal that sent 272 slaves from Maryland to Louisiana, were dedicated in the names of former slaves: Isaac Hawkins, whose name is shown at the top of the bill of sale, and Anne Marie Becraft, a freed African American woman who founded a school for Catholic black girls in Georgetown.

At the Gaston Hall ceremony, attended by descendants of the slaves sold off by the university, Georgetown's president, John DeGioia, said the school — like others on the East Coast — participated in America's "original sin," slavery. "We offer this apology for the descendants and your ancestors humbly and without expectations, and we trust ourselves to God and the Spirit and the grace He freely offers to find ways to work together and build together," DeGioia said.

Rev. Timothy Kesicki, S.J., president of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States, said, “Today the Society of Jesus, which helped to establish Georgetown University and whose leaders enslaved and mercilessly sold your ancestors, stands before you to say: We have greatly sinned, in our thoughts and in our words, in what we have done and in what we have failed to do.” He added: "We betrayed the very name of Jesus for whom our least society is named."

“Penance is very important,” said Sandra Green Thomas, president of the GU272 Descendants Association. “Penance is required when you have violated God’s law.”

The university selected the day because it was a few days after D.C. Emancipation Day, which commemorates the freeing of slaves in the District of Columbia by President Abraham Lincoln on April 16, 1862.
[SOURCE: Georgetowner]


Thursday, September 01, 2016

Georgetown to make up for past ties to slavery

Georgetown University is taking steps to atone for its historical ties to slavery. The plan includes giving the descendants of slaves the same admissions advantages that children of alumni receive. Watch more below:

Saturday, November 14, 2015

Georgetown Univ. students protest dormitory named after slave owner.

Georgetown students began a sit-in Friday outside University President John DeGioia’s office, calling for him to change the name of Mulledy Hall, a newly reopened dormitory named for a former university president and slaveholder.

Between 20 and 40 students arrived outside the office at 9 a.m. and intend to stay until the building closes at midnight, returning again Saturday morning.

A group of the demonstrators met with DeGioia within an hour of beginning the sit-in, but plan to continue until the building’s name is changed, according to posts on the event’s Facebook page by organizers.

The sit-in was announced at a solidarity demonstration on Thursday, during which students spoke about their experiences as racial minorities on campus and called for a list of six demands to be fulfilled, including changing the names of three buildings, developing an endowment to hire more black faculty and staff and instituting programs and plaques on campus to recognize the role of African Americans in the University’s history.

A Working Group on Slavery, Memory and Reconciliation, which was convened earlier this year in response to backlash toward the building’s name, met with DeGioia to discuss the protesters’ demands. As of 2:45 p.m., no public statements had been made, and demonstrators have declined to comment.

Read more: Georgetown Univ. sit-in demands building name change