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Divestment: A personal take: why I believe the College should divest from the fossil fuel industry
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Divestment: Bowdoin Climate Action stages protest on Quad
Members of Bowdoin Climate Action (BCA) constructed a makeshift “climate camp” on the Main Quad Wednesday night, in hopes of pressuring the College’s Board of Trustees to meet with the group next week to discuss divesting the endowment from fossil fuels.
Sarah Nelson ’14, who took over as president of Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) Wednesday evening, informed BCA at around 5:30 p.m. yesterday that it could not have a demonstration on College property without written permission, and asked the students to dismantle the camp by 7 p.m. In response, BCA agreed to lose its status as a chartered student organization in order to prolong the protest.
A statement on the website of the Office of the Dean of Student Affairs explains, “No person shall utilize the College’s property, including photographic reproductions of its property, for commercial, business, political or public purposes without express written consent.”
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Divestment: To fulfill Offer of the College, we should divest
I write to address two issues raised in recent Orient articles: whether environmental literacy should be a distribution requirement, and whether the College should divest from fossil fuels. When David Orr wrote, “All education is environmental education,” he could have had in mind the second line of William DeWitt Hyde’s Offers of the College: “To count Nature a familiar acquaintance.” Bowdoin’s environmental studies program is built on that same ideal; its website emphasizes that “A liberal arts education should promote environmental literacy: an understanding of the world around us… our role in it, and our effects upon it.” Compared to most colleges, Bowdoin has a vibrant ES program and a rich array of courses that address sustainability. We are leaders in terms of campus recycling, reducing our carbon footprint, etc. But is the College actually fulfilling Hyde’s famous offer? Do our students graduate with enough know-how and motivation to address the hugely serious environmental problems they will inherit? Ten years ago, when the Curriculum and Education Policy Committee was working on a new system of distribution requirements, a number of faculty argued that environmental literacy ought to be included. Today, 10 years deeper into an extinction crisis, and with our climate changing right before our eyes, it’s time for our curricular structure to catch up. Given logistical problems such as staffing new courses, adding a distribution requirement in environmental literacy may not be the best answer. But I believe the College needs to show much more urgency and creativity in trying to figure out what the best answer might be.
As for the proposal for Bowdoin to divest from investments in fossil fuels—gradually, responsibly, by targeting the most egregious fossil fuel companies, and without unduly compromising our core programs and commitments—I support it for several reasons. First, the tough questions asked by the student Climate Action group have sparked exactly the sort of debates one would hope to hear on an intellectually engaged college campus. Not just among students, but also among a faculty and administration that seem newly energized by our students to grapple seriously with environmental issues. Witness the packed attendance at the Sustainability Panel two weeks ago, as well as recent film showings and seminars by visiting speakers on the issue of climate change. Second, our curriculum says a lot about what Bowdoin stands for. So does our endowment; it should reflect the same values as our curriculum. If in the classroom we decry the mining and burning of fossil fuels, should the College be enjoying profits from those activities? Third, although divestment won’t solve the problem of our overreliance on fossil fuels, it’s a start. Even symbolic gestures can have an outsized educational impact. Two colleges in Maine have already made the move to divest, leveraging their relatively small endowments to make a nationwide statement about sustainability. Soon, though, to effect change we will need to end public subsidies for oil and gas companies and put a price on fuels that reflects their true environmental and social costs.
Finally, we don’t have to be purists or turn our back on modernity in order to make a difference. After all, safeguarding our environment for future generations is a marathon, not a sprint. But our students should know that the issues are real, complicated, serious, and upon us. So, all hands on deck.
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Divestment: Bowdoin must focus on alternatives to divestment
Like my colleague Nat Wheelwright, I applaud student concern about climate change and activism in the political arena. However, I am unsure that divestment of college and university endowments is the best target on which to focus student action for two reasons.
First, almost of us are willing consumers of fossil fuel energy—some more willing than others—but all of us consume fossil fuel energy. Therefore, we are complicit in the problem. As such, the divestment movement seems to contain an element of hypocrisy at its core.
To be clear, I understand very well how some major oil producers have funded the egregious disinformation campaign about anthropogenic climate change. These companies and the people responsible deserve society’s contempt for obfuscating the issue and potentially delaying action on climate, but I don’t know that all oil and gas companies are equally culpable.
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Divestment: Global warming is not a winner-take-all game
As students and professors prepare for the final push to finish another year at Bowdoin, and administrators led by President Barry Mills tend to the business of running an elite liberal arts college with a centuries-old reputation of excellence, what’s all this fuss being made over divestment? Or rather, given that the independent scientific community globally, including those at NASA, is practically unanimous in concluding that global warming is an extremely urgent planetary emergency, why aren’t people making a bigger fuss?
A review of recent articles in the Orient reveals a paucity of debate—only a handful of people have become involved, all generally in favor of divestment, trading verbal jabs with a cadre of anonymous screen names who may well be on the payroll of Koch Industries or the American Petroleum Institute.
Without repeating in full the cogent analysis of my classmate, Scott Budde ’81, in his February 13 Orient op-ed, I echo his conviction that a transparent discussion needs to occur between the Administration, the members of the Bowdoin Climate Action Committee, and the larger Bowdoin community. So far, the students urging divestment have been politely dismissed, with President Mills sidestepping the moral indefensibility of his position:
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Divestment: Panelists criticize resistance to divestment
Bowdoin Climate Action (BCA) hosted a panel of advocates and experts to discuss divestment on Saturday night, after being postponed multiple times due to weather.
The panel was composed of 350.org founder Bill McKibben and Director of the Responsible Endowment Coalition Dan Apfel, who both conferenced in via Skype to join Unity College President Stephen Mulkey, Director of the Sierra Club Maine Glen Brand, and divestment coordinator for 350.org Maine Read Brugger—all panelists spoke critically about Bowdoin’s resistance to divestment.
McKibben said that Bowdoin, by not divesting, is acting in opposition to its values.
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Divestment: Administration should be more transparent on divestment issue
See also, counterpoint by Miles Pope '09: Endowment must be used for education, not politicization.
Two weeks ago Bowdoin’s administration publicly expressed its views on divesting the endowment from fossil fuels in a statement to the Orient. President Barry Mills and Senior Vice President for Investments Paula Volent argued that although only 1.4 percent of the endowment was invested in the top 200 fossil fuel firms, divestment would have cost the school $100 million dollars.
These numbers are alarming, yet it is strange that the administration provided a figure for estimated losses from divestment without publicly releasing a study to back up its numbers. Students should not take the administration’s numbers at face value and should continue to advocate for more information on the feasibility of divestment.
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Divestment: Endowment must be used for education, not politicization
See also, counterpoint by Ben Richmond '13: Administration should be more transparent on divestment issue.
While Scott Budde (“Administration’s ‘misinformed’ response to divestment raises more questions than it answers”) is surely correct that fossil fuel companies help cause serious environmental problems, this is not reason enough for Bowdoin to divest from them.
Bowdoin does more “good” by maximizing the resources it has: by promoting top-rate scholarships (including environmental) and educating undergraduates, than it would by diminishing its endowment—no matter how well-intentioned the causes may be. As President Barry Mills said, Bowdoin “is not a political action committee.”
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Divestment: 1.4 percent of College’s endowment invested in fossil fuels
In the past few months, divestment has evolved from a burgeoning movement on a handful of college campuses to a nationwide effort, though only three schools have agreed to divest their endowments from fossil fuels thus far. At Bowdoin, members of Green Bowdoin Alliance (GBA) have scaled up their efforts to push the College on the issue, and submitted a formal proposal last week that urges President Barry Mills and the Board of Trustees to divest from the top 200 publicly traded fossil fuel companies within the next five years. In a joint statement provided to the Orient on Wednesday, Mills and Paula Volent, senior vice president for investments, wrote that approximately 1.4 percent of Bowdoin’s endowment is invested in these 200 companies. The College invests in them through large commingled funds that contain hundreds of other stocks. Divesting from fossil fuels would require a turnover of over 25 percent of the endowment, according to the statement.
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Divestment: Mills says College will not divest from fossil fuels
President Mills said the College would not agree to divest the endowment of fossil fuels in the immediate future on Tuesday, just one day before Middlebury College announced plans to investigate the feasibility of divesting its own endowment. “At this point, we’re not prepared to commit to divest from fossil fuels, but I would never say never,” said President Mills on Tuesday afternoon, shortly after meeting with a group of students, led by Matthew Goodrich ’15, who petitioned for divestment. “We expressed to him that this is an issue that the student body cares very deeply about and that we really want to move forward with this,” Goodrich said.
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Divestment: Initiatives seek to hold students, College accountable on sustainability
New student-run environmental initiatives on campus aim to give students the chance to stand behind more than just their ballot votes next week.
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Divestment: Campus considers activism’s impact
Recent efforts to raise awareness about the human rights crisis in Darfur have taken many forms, ranging from divestment to film screenings. Students have succeeded in persuading President Barry Mills and the Board of Trustees to agree not to invest in companies with business interests in Darfur. In addition, the Darfur Coalition organized Darfur Week, a campus-wide educational and fundraising campaign.
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Divestment: Trustee vote expected on Darfur divestment
When the Board of Trustees meets this weekend in Boston, they will discuss The Bowdoin Campaign, get updates on the new hockey rink, hear from administrators about Bowdoin's possible purchase of land at Brunsick Naval Air Station, and discuss the College's reaccreditation among other topics, according to Secretary of the College Richard Mersereau '69.
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Divestment: President issues Darfur proposal
After a lively trustee meeting, recommendations by an advisory committee, and four months of deliberation, President Barry Mills made public on Wednesday his recommendations for Bowdoin's investment policy on the humanitarian situation in the Darfur region of Sudan.
MORE:
? Full Text: Mills's recommendation
? Editorial: Rally around proposal -
Divestment: Mills readies Darfur policy recommendation
President Barry Mills plans to make public his recommendations on Bowdoin's investment policy regarding the humanitarian crisis in Darfur within the next two weeks.
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Divestment: Darfur committee to finalize recommendation for Board
Since its creation earlier this semester, the Advisory Committee on Darfur has been formulating a course of action to recommend to the Board of Trustees regarding college investments potentially linked to the situation in Darfur, classified by the U.S. government as genocide. Several peer institutions have recently announced divestment from companies that do business with Sudan.
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Divestment: Concealed investments worry some
Administration expresses confidence in ethics of endowment investments
As Bowdoin boasts high returns on its half-billion-dollar endowment?which provides nearly a quarter of its budget annually?a small number of students have been meeting informally with President Barry Mills over the past year about concerns over whether the College's money is invested in socially responsible companies.