Graphic by Kinsey Couture ’22
BY ANNA KANE ’20 & LIZ LEWIS ’22
Smith College recently committed to completely divest from the fossil fuel industry in the next 15 years, a major step towards sustainability on their campus.
Smith’s president, Kathleen McCartney, released a statement on Oct. 18 by Smith’s Board of Trustees to begin an immediate “phaseout of all current investments with fossil fuel–specific managers in the Smith College endowment,” and to move to “exclude from the Smith College endowment all future investments with fossil fuel–specific managers.”
Divestment, or the removal of investment from funds in a particular industry due to social, political or financial reasons, has been a goal of the student group Smith College Divest for the past eight years. Though the recent announcement is an undeniable victory for the group, many student organizers emphasize that the work is not over.
“We are here not only to celebrate the step Smith has taken in the right direction, but also to hold Smith accountable for the work that still needs to be done. Smith is still complicit,” Emma Freedman, a member of Divest Smith College, said in an interview with the Daily Hampshire Gazette.
Smith is one of many other colleges of its size and financial stature to commit to divestment in recent years. Its contemporaries include the Pioneer Valley’s own Hampshire College and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, as well as Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont.
However, many similar institutions have chosen not to divest. For instance, Swarthmore College announced it would not pursue fossil fuel divestment in 2015. Mount Holyoke has not divested from fossil fuels.
Mount Holyoke student groups have been advocating for the College’s divestment from fossil fuels for years. The Climate Justice Coalition (CJC) was founded in the spring of 2012 and has been advocating for the College to divest since. In the spring of 2016, students from the CJC presented at a Board of Trustees meeting to discuss divestment from fossil fuels. The organization called for an immediate freeze on all of the College’s investments, and complete divestment by the year 2021, with money instead reinvested into sustainable firms and industries.
Mount Holyoke’s Board of Trustees responded by unanimously voting not to divest.
In an April 13, 2017 letter to the College community, the Board of Trustees wrote that they believe climate change is a defining issue of the times and the College has a role in educating about its dangers. The Board decided against divestment because it would “require the College to sell over one-third of its current endowment,” according to the Board. The College has no direct investments in companies among the top 200 publicly traded fossil fuel companies. Mount Holyoke’s endowment is $777.7 million. According to the College’s website, 26 percent of the annual operating budget relies on the endowment. The Board also wrote that the College established a Green Revolving Fund in 2015 in an effort to implement energy conservation, renewable energy and other sustainability on campus and generate cost savings. The commitment would make $150,000 available for green initiatives on campus for the 2017-2018 academic year.
“I remember when Mount Holyoke had the opportunity to divest and then the Trustees voted unanimously against the wishes of the faculty, staff and students,” Emilia Nobrega ’20 said.
Nobrega finds it “highly suspect” that, in the two years since the vote against divestment, there haven’t been “any updates on what progress, if any, has been made with changes towards the investing practices with the environment.”
The Mount Holyoke CJC continues to pressure the College to divest. On April 14, 2017, the CJC held a rally outside of Mary Lyon Hall as part of a Fossil Fuel Divestment Day of Action. The event featured speakers, information on divestment and climate justice and a die-in.
“If Mount Holyoke really wants to portray themselves as a sustainable, ‘green’ school,” Nobrega said, “they need to put their money where their mouth is.”