Tulane University in New Orleans owes reparations to the descendants of people who generations ago worked the land on which it sits, student activists contend.
Prior to its founding in 1834 as a medical school, the land was agricultural and presumably was worked by servants or slaves.
Now the university's Black Student Union is asking officials to identify the people who worked the land and give money to their descendants along with free tuition and other benefits, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
"We demand that Tulane allocates funding to track down the descendants of the enslaved people who labored at the Tulane plantation and offer them full tuition and room and board scholarships that include a living stipend each semester of attendance at Tulane," the student union stated.
Activists demand major university pay reparations"Tulane must first acknowledge the trauma it has inflicted on black community members. It is Tulane's responsibility to recognize their longstanding history of racism and take actionable steps to reconcile those practices."
Other demands include reparations for all who suffered "emotional damage and trauma" from a "Victory Bell" on campus that was found to have been used to direct the movement of slaves in 1825.
The bell was removed when officials said they found its link to slavery.
"We demand reparations for the emotional damage and trauma of the McAlister slave bell due to racist tradition of touching the bell for 'good luck' for generations," the statement said.
The Black Student Union also demands that "every living president of Tulane University since the bell was obtained, or a relative of the presidents if deceased, apologize to their black alumni and current student body for their negligence in addressing the slave bell's history."
No definition of "emotional damage" was offered, but Rachel Altman, a senior and a libertarian activist, told the Beacon the students making the demands are cultivating a "culture of authoritarianism."
"I think it would be very hard to find a consistent policy for offering reparations to the students for emotional trauma because it is so easy to falsify and it is so hard to quantify," she said.
"Personally, I don't think that it's reasonable to expect the relatives of people who apparently were complicit in something to apologize for it. That's what's done in North Korea, not the United States. That is absolutely a culture of authoritarianism."
The activists also want censorship authority and insist the university investigate students who post "hate speech" online.
Altman said that would be a problem, because the definition of "bigoted" can change from day to day.
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