Fossil fuel divestment at Dartmouth struck campus debate at the Dialogue on Divestment event in May. Arguments put forward by students, environmentalists and professors have mirrored nationwide debates on college divestment.
These debates have allowed me to rethink my position as a Dartmouth student. I am not only a student at a college; I am also a stakeholder of sorts in the business called Dartmouth College. Therefore, I am a stakeholder and proxy shareholder in the companies in which Dartmouth has financial interests.
Since I, like most students, have little idea of which companies the College invests its endowment in, this is a worrisome thought. Does Dartmouth own shares in companies, beyond those involved in drilling and oil and the like, whose impacts I might oppose?
A quick look at the 2012 Endowment Report reveals little. The assets listed are extremely vague: "Global Equity," "Marketable Alternatives" and "Natural Resources" represent a few. Although this compares to endowment reports at other schools (including Harvard, Columbia and Swarthmore ), it still does not tell us much.
I appreciate that we are not shareholders in the word's factual definition, but I, alongside many other students, feel a sense of responsibility over the College and its decisions, financial or otherwise. What if the College invested in companies that use sweatshops, businesses that use child labor or firms that pollute water sources in drought-prone regions? Though students often unwittingly fuel the continued existence of these industries outside Dartmouth by buying anything from a T-shirt to a box of strawberries, it is unacceptable that they might be unknowingly complicit through the institution that serves to educate them, often on precisely these issues.
I would, of course, like to know if Dartmouth invests in any businesses I find questionable, and I urge more transparency from the Investment Office. Yet this raises the issue of follow-through; what would we do if the College invested in McDonald's, whose food has faced scrutiny for its role in the nationwide obesity epidemic?
If we divested from every company associated with human rights abuse or negative societal impact, there might be no endowment left. The fact that our student body has diverse interests in human rights and social justice issues is the complicating factor, though I would never suggest that we pare it down. Nevertheless, if information on endowment investments were made public, students could at least have an informed opinion, rather than feel immobilized.
Additionally, Dartmouth does have a divestment history. In 1985, students urged divestment from South Africa during the apartheid era. Shanties on the Green protested the College's investment in South Africa. Other divestment cases at Dartmouth include Hydro-Quebec in 1991, spurred by planned dam impingements on Cree Indians' land, and Sudanese companies in 2005 because of genocide in Darfur.
Divesting in 1985, 1991 and 2005 did not lead to a slippery slope of successive divestment campaigns. While the amount of student activism around divestment might increase if investment information were published each case mentioned involved student activism the Investment Office would have the last word when deciding where to place Dartmouth's endowment.
More investment transparency would allow me as a student to understand my position on these issues. Students deserve to be more than just passive assenters to the College's financial decisions. We have a moral stake in them, too.
