(Joshua Paladino, Headline USA) Yale University has instituted a reparations plan to send local high school students out of state to Historically Black Colleges and Universities rather than enroll them at the Ivy League school.
Yale will provide $20,000 scholarships through the Pennington Fellowship to 50 students per year, the College Fix reported. The money will help them pay for tuition at one of the nation’s 101 HBCUs, most of which are located in the southern United States.
Students at New Haven high school in Connecticut are eligible for the scholarships. Connecticut does not have any HBCUs, so the scholarships will necessarily help move Americans away from the state.
Brett Hoover, a spokesperson for Yale’s New Haven Promise, which will grant the scholarships, said students of all races in New Haven can apply.
He added that Yale offers a different scholarship for local high school students who want to attend.
“Over the last 10 years, nearly 500 city students have expressed interest in attending a Historically Black College or University,” Brett Hoover told The Fix. “It was the right time to make such an opportunity to allow students’ dreams [to] become a reality.”
The scholarships were announced a year after the Yale and Slavery Working Group found that Yale blocked a proposed college for black Americans in 1831.
The Pennington Fellowship, which honors Yale’s first black students with its name, will help address “historical disparities in educational opportunities for Black citizens” and atone for “Yale’s historical role and associations with slavery.”
Yale’s atonement for slavery follows states like California and New York that have sought to implement reparations plans for black Americans.
Hoover said Yale wants to support everyone’s hope of attending college, even if they cannot make it into the Ivy League university.
“Yale itself has a low acceptance rate (about 6%) and while the university admits between a dozen and two dozen New Haven public school students annually, the university makes the offer to help support city students in meeting their college dreams,” he said.
The 50 new HBCU scholarships will make up a small part of Yale’s total funding to other institutions.
“Yale has been funding New Haven students to go to college through New Haven Promise since 2010 and is usually funding more than 700 students at any given time,” Hoover said.
