Students from Bowdoin Climate Action (BCA) will meet with the Board of Trustees at its October 17 meeting to make their case for the College's divestment from fossil fuels. A week after presenting 1,000 signatures in support of divestment to President Barry Mills, BCA leader Matt Goodrich ’15 was offered the opportunity in an email from Mills on Friday.
Last week, Mills told the Orient that it was unlikely students would be able to meet with the trustees before the end of this academic year, as they would be busy this spring and summer searching for his successor. He announced in Friday's email that the student group could meet with the board during their scheduled weekend of on-campus meetings this fall.
Goodrich was not surprised by the offer.
“I think that we demonstrated that this is an incredibly important issue on campus,” he said.
Approximately 100 community members gathered on April 18 outside of Hawthorne-Longfellow Library to watch while Goodrich handed the petition to Mills. It was the largest pro-divestment showing the campus has seen since the movement's genesis last year.
Mills has made clear his opposition to divestment on various occasions, most recently after receiving the petition from Goodrich.
“For me to break the deal that we’ve made with people who have given money to the College for generations, there has to be uniform agreement that the cause that we’re breaking it for is not some political cause or social cause that some people believe in, but others don’t,” Mills told the Orient last week.
In an Orient letter to the editor on Tuesday, Mills clarified that, while he does think climate change is an important issue, he does not believe divestment is the best solution.
“While there should not be a legitimate debate about the existence of climate change,” he wrote, “there is surely an ongoing legitimate debate about the solutions. I believe it is inappropriate for Bowdoin to ignore our duties to the College and our endowment by essentially picking 'the winner' among these many positions through divestment from fossil fuels.”
Goodrich intends to reference other college divestment presentations in organizing BCA’s case to the trustees.
“This is a huge victory for student empowerment at Bowdoin College,” Goodrich said.