Students at Brown University overwhelmingly voted to give reparations to the descendants of slaves who were associated with the school and its founders.
The College Fix reported that the students last week voted in favor of a referendum that offered two questions: If the school should make “all possible efforts to identify the descendants of enslaved Africans who were entangled with and/or afflicted by the University and Brown family and their associates” and if those descendants should be paid reparations.
“The first question passed with 89 percent approval and the second passed with 85 percent approval,” the Fix reported. “Of the 7,000 undergraduate students at Brown, 2,000 cast ballots in the reparations referendum.”
The student vote doesn’t mean reparations will be immediately adopted, however. The referendum was merely a recommendation that will now go to Brown administrators to decide whether or not to provide reparations (and a likely corresponding increase in tuition). More from the Fix:
A resolution passed by the Undergraduate Council of Students on February 24 suggested the reparations would come in the form of preferential admissions for the descendants of slaves associated with the school and its founders, as well as scholarships and direct payments to those individuals.
The resolution further called on the university to investigate the same benefits to “Native American groups indigenous to the land Brown occupies such as the Narragansett.”
The outlet further reported that the first black president of an Ivy League university, Brown President Ruth Simmons, in 2003 formed a Committee on Slavery and Justice to study the school’s connection to past slavery. In 2006, that committee issued a report that came very close to calling for reparations. Simmons at the time said reparations would not come after the report was issued.
The vote follows a series of harmful new policies from Brown University that have made it one of the most “woke” schools in the country. In late March, The Daily Wire reported on Brown’s new sexual misconduct policy, designed to get around Trump-era regulations that required accused students be granted basic due process rights. The new policies expanded Brown’s jurisdiction over sexual misconduct to include anywhere so long as at least one Brown student was involved.
Guidelines from the Trump administration that were formally adopted last May narrowed Brown and other universities’ jurisdiction in sexual assault cases, meaning colleges and universities couldn’t act as a de facto police department for allegations that didn’t occur on university property or within university-sponsored events.
Brown followed up this policy with an online form allowing students to anonymously accuse others of heinous crimes like rape and sexual assault without having to provide evidence or even their name. It is unclear exactly how seriously anonymous allegations will be taken, but given Brown’s history of railroading accused students no matter how thin the evidence against them, it’s safe to assume an anonymous accusation will be all that’s needed to expel a student.