If these students really believe their school sits on stolen land, shouldn’t they drop out and leave?
The College Fix reports:
Claiming MSU sits on ‘stolen land,’ student leaders pass resolution to rename Morrill buildingThe student government at Michigan State University recently passed a resolution to rename the college’s Justin S. Morrill Hall of Agriculture, citing the belief that the university sits on “stolen land.”Morrill, an abolitionist who represented Vermont in the U.S. Senate, was the author of the 1862 Land-Grant College Act, which donated federal lands to many different states for the purpose of creating agricultural and mechanical arts colleges, one of which was MSU.According to the resolution that the Associated Students of Michigan State University provided to The College Fix, “The Morrill Act stole approximately 10.7 million acres of land from about 250 Native American Tribes,” which displaced many of the members of these tribes.In MSU’s case, the university sits on the ancestral lands of the “Anishinaabeg – Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi peoples.” Each meeting of ASMSU begins with the reading of a “Land Acknowledgment,” which names these tribes, the resolution states.Signs in East Lansing that welcome visitors to campus boast of being “the pioneer land grant college.”What the student government resolution does not mention is that Morrill (pictured) wrote two land-grant bills during his time in the Senate. The second bill, passed in 1890, focused on reserving land for the creation of historically black colleges and universities.This law was likely the culmination of years of political action, as Frederick Douglass wrote a letter to Morrill in 1880, praising him for his efforts to get more funding for black schools.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY