University of Virginia to study school’s connection to slavery
The University of Virginia announced last Thursday the formation of a new Commission on Slavery and the University to investigate the school’s historical ties to the slave trade and the role of slave labor in constructing important university sites and buildings.
UVA President Teresa Sullivan created the commission — which includes 27 faculty members, staff members, students and community members — to further “the effort of many members of our university community who have worked to raise awareness of the university’s relationship with slavery and to commemorate the role of enslaved persons in appropriate ways,” she said in a UVA press release.
In addition to unearthing the past, the commission is tasked with creating a framework to educate members of the UVA community about the school’s ties to slavery. Its formation comes after a report last year from the school’s Office for Diversity and Equity that compiled various initiatives and attempts to engage with the university’s history regarding slavery.
Among the slavery-related revelations in recent years was the discovery last fall of a site next to the UVA cemetery that contained 67 unidentified grave shafts, which are thought to have been for slaves.
Brown was at the vanguard of a wave of universities confronting their past ties to slavery when former President Ruth Simmons appointed a Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice in 2003. Many of the committee’s report’s recommendations, released in 2006, lingered in limbo for years until Professor of Africana Studies Anthony Bogues was named director of the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice in May 2012.
At Alabama, anger erupts over sororities’ refusal to integrate
The University of Alabama became a center of controversy last week when the Crimson White, the school’s student newspaper, reported Sept. 11 that alums had forced several traditionally white sororities to reject an otherwise qualified applicant because she was black.
None of the white sororities have offered a bid to an applicant of color since 2003, the New York Times reported.
Melanie Gotz, a member of the Alpha Delta Gamma sorority, openly questioned her chapter’s decision at a meeting when members who expected to vote on several applicants were told that round’s cuts were already finished.
“Are we really not going to talk about the black girl?” she asked, according to the Crimson White article.
Members of multiple other sororities anonymously told the Crimson White that alums or rush advisers had forced students not to consider the candidate in question, with a source from one sorority telling the newspaper that alums threatened to cut funding to the chapter if they accepted the black student.
The ensuing fracas reached state government, with Gov. Robert Bentley, a University of Alabama alum, publicly criticizing the Greek system’s lack of integration, the Times reported.
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