BY NINA LARBI ’22
Smith College announced that it would divest from fossil fuels within the next 15 years on Oct. 18. This news was welcomed with celebration from Smith students — having overwhelmingly voted for divestment in a Student Government Association referendum earlier this semester — and from the Five College community. Currently, of the Five Colleges, only Amherst and Mount Holyoke Colleges have yet to divest from fossil fuel industries.
The Mount Holyoke Board of Trustees has received significant pushback from students and various campus organizations like the Climate Justice Coalition (CJC) and Mount Holyoke’s hub of the Sunrise Movement for their 2017 decision not to divest.
In a recent statement on Smith’s divestment, the CJC said, “Smith College is our peer institution and their decision to divest is just another indication that divestment from fossil fuels is the only moral and equitable course of action for the Mount Holyoke administration to take.”
The Board of Trustees’ refusal to listen to the student body and divest contradicts a proud Mount Holyoke selling point: student activism.
The College’s website goes so far as to claim that “social activism is in our DNA.” Mount Holyoke’s Board of Trustees should listen to students and divest.
“It is important to note that divesting from fossil fuels does not have a financial risk. No entity that has divested from fossil fuels has reported a financial penalty,” Associate Professor of physics Alexi Arango said. “If the college chooses not to divest, it calls into question the commitment to fulfill the promise of carbon neutrality by 2037.”
Despite the institution’s position against fossil fuel divestment, the College is proud of its divestment from companies that supported apartheid in South Africa in 1985. The archives are full of postcards picturing students from the 1980s protesting for the cause. Apartheid and climate change are not analogous, but it is indisputable that climate change is affecting communities of color, the lower classes and young folks the most. Campus protests for apartheid divestment started in the 1970s, but the College took about a decade to listen to students. There is also strong evidence suggesting that Mount Holyoke reinvested in such companies.
Campus activism is only a marketing tool for the administration, they do not feel an obligation to meet our demands. Mount Holyoke is an activist campus, however, this identity should not be appropriated by the administration, who have consistently undermined our efforts.
“I think [divestment is] an important step in making this college greener,” Emma Forman ’22 said. “ Fossil fuels are not about anything but profit to large corporations, so redirecting money out of their pockets is hopefully an effective way to demonstrate that non-renewable energy sources are not where the money lies for the future.”
The investment that is not being discussed in conversations of divestment is that of the students. We are all investing large parts of ourselves in this school.
“Mount Holyoke should be prioritizing the futures of their students,” Mount Holyoke Sunrise hub coordinator Gabbi Perry ’22 said. “To truly be a sustainable school means difficult action and sacrifices and telling our community and the world that we won’t support fossil fuel business.”
We worked hard to be accepted, we pay the ridiculous tuition — which increased 4.5 percent in the past year — and we spend hours within the community, being students, working various jobs and participating in organizations.
In turn, our activism is turned into a selling point and appropriated by the very administration that refuses to listen to us.