Sometimes moral action wins the vote

Georgetown University is the unusual U.S. institution whose history of profiting from slavery can be properly documented. Not only that, the descendants of the 272 enslaved men, women and children the University sold off in 1838 to deep South plantations to pay its debts have been individually identified.

Students wanted the school to do more than apologize. So they organized a student vote on a measure that

proposes a fee, starting with $27.20 per student for the fall 2020 semester, that would raise an estimated $400,000. The student fee would increase with inflation and would fund a nonprofit led by a board of students and descendants, who would give money to charitable causes directly benefiting descendants of the 19th-century sale.

More than two thirds of students who voted approved of the fee. (Tuition was over $50K per academic year in 2019.) It will be up to the administration to implement the measure -- or not. The student vote should create plenty of pressure here.