A Call to Divest

We all chose to come to Ithaca College for one reason or another, whether that was academic programs, gorgeous gorges or the No.1 college town. For some, they chose to come here for one of the college’s five main values: commitment to sustainability.

Yet, what good are the degrees we are earning in college if the world in which we could use them no longer exists due to global warming? This is the question many IC students involved with the Divest Campaign are asking to try to stir action amongst students and the college’s board of trustees. The group is actually a coalition between many clubs on campus, modeled after the GA’s from the Occupy movement.

The Divest For Our Future Campaign is a partnership between Better Future Project, Students for a Just and Stable Future and 350.org. According to Divest For Our Future, their main goal is to “have all college and university presidents and boards to immediately freeze any new investment in fossil fuel companies and divest from direct or indirect ownership of fossil fuel stocks and bonds within 5 years.”

There are 22 campus campaigns nationally, including at the IC and Cornell campuses. The IC Divest campaign has been directly directed toward the college’s board of trustees, calling upon them to divest.

“One of the elements of that fiduciary responsibility is that trustees have oversight of investing the endowment in a way that promises the best possible monetary returns so as to help subsidize high quality educational programs, provide student financial aid, and so forth,” Ithaca College President Tom Rochon said. “However, it also means investing the endowment in a way that is in alignment with the mission and values of the college.”

There are 200 publically traded companies that hold a majority of the world’s coal, oil and gas reserves. These are the companies the project hopes colleges and universities will divest from, instead investing in clean energy to build a strong, local, green economy. In a statement from the national campaign, “The mission of higher education is to provide individuals with the tools, resources, and knowledge to have an influence on the world around them. Our schools invest in our future. Yet at the same time, they are supporting corporations that are actively threatening the future of all life on earth.”

Fossil fuel companies are polluting the earth without paying for the damages they are causing directly to ecosystems and indirectly through sever weather caused by increased global climate change.

“You don’t think about investing where the money is,” IC Divest student leader Allison Currier said. “We think about green building and using compostable material and recycling and that all is really good and important but to make real change you need to make it from the inside out and you need to move money because we live in a capitalist system where money drives everything.”

With a $200 million endowment at stake, you would think this movement would be getting more attention by the college media, as well as the national mainstream media. However, there are virtually no news stories on this campaign. This is because news stations have become directly tied to huge corporations, many in the oil industry. For example, Exxon Mobil sponsored CNN’s election night coverage. And they were being transparent; many national news stations do not disclose their ties to major corporations like GM, BP and more.

As students trying to preserve our future for our families, selves and world, we have a right to want the institutions we attend to divest from the companies that threaten that future, However, until the national media can also divest, there will be no fair coverage or pressure put on this institutions to want to make a change in this capitalistic system. And $200 million is a small endowment; imagine the change that could occur with divestment from larger colleges, universities and organizations.

I think the media has a responsibility to shed light on this campaign and the wants of the American youth, regardless of sponsorships or corporate affiliations.