By LAURA KNUDSON Editor-in-Chief
The faculty senate is encouraging Western’s Development Foundation to investigate and provide information on fossil fuel divestment.
In an (18-4-0) vote, the senate passed a resolution Tuesday calling for the collaboration of the foundation, environmental club, Associated Students of
Western Oregon University, and the administration.
Divesting refers to getting rid of stocks, bonds or investment funds that are part of the fossil fuel industry.
The foundation is a private, nonprofit organization that financially assists the college through investment returns and gifts from donors. Last school year, the foundation’s total revenue was $4,302,690 according to their audit report.
Earlier this year, the environmental club, comprised of about 15 to 20 members launched a divestment campaign, collecting signatures in favor of divestment, representing more than 10 percent of the student body. They also protested outside at a Dec. 6 foundation meeting after being denied a spot on the agenda.
Foundation meetings are closed for confidentiality, so groups or individuals must be invited to speak.
Karl Amspacher, environmental club member, recently submitted a resolution to ASWOU, calling for the foundation to divest over the next five years or explain their reasoning if they chose not to.
In a 0-5-0 vote Jan. 28, the ASWOU senate did not approve the resolution. At the same meeting, Amspacher asked the Senate to withdraw the resolution because, “It felt like it wasn’t going to pass, and it’d be better to have something pass then have it voted down,” he said.
Since Senator Braden Shribbs had written the legislation and is, therefore, the only one who can withdraw it, the vote took place because Shribbs was absent from the meeting.
Corbin Garner, ASWOU president, said the resolution was not approved because “the students [senators] conversed with were not well informed, and we felt that divestment at this point was not the right option.”
Amspacher was disappointed in the decision to move forward with the vote. “They could have tabled it indefinitely,” Amspacher said. “Instead they chose to vote on it, and they voted unanimously.” He added there is clear student support in favor of divestment and ASWOU is “disregarding their mission” as a voice for students. “Whatever their motives are, it’s not in support of students,” he said.
ASWOU has not taken a stance on divestment, Garner said, because, “We don’t feel it’s our place to take a side.” The environmental club plans to introduce legislation to ASWOU modeled after the faculty senate legislation that was passed.
Dr. Emily Plec, co-adviser of the environmental club, has taken over for Mark VanSteeter, who is on sabbatical. Plec said the club is shifting their strategy to a “longer approach focused on multiple goals.”
By working to increase campus awareness and educate on divestment, they will “pull back from the force with which they had approached foundation partners in finding out more information,” she said.
“There’s been this perception on campus that the foundation has avoided any conversation and that’s not true,” Tommy Love, executive director in the Office of University Advancement and Western Development Foundation said in a Tuesday interview.
While the foundation does not disclose where they invest, Love did contact the foundation fund managers, Ferguson Wellman Capital Management in Portland, requesting information on the foundation’s investments in energy.
He was provided with a graphic demonstrating 5 percent of the foundation’s endowments are in energy. Of that 5 percent, not all is necessarily in fossil fuels, Love said.
Fund managers who weighed in also disagree with divestment, Love said. “They don’t think it will have any impact.” “We’re not giving these companies an influx of cash; we’re buying an ownership stake,” Love said. “That’s essentially what stock is.”
Love is not alone in this regard. “I don’t think divestment deals with it in the slightest,” President Mark Weiss said in a phone interview Wednesday.
While Weiss acknowledges climate change is a serious issue, he said, “There’s no incentive to not burn fossil fuels. It doesn’t do anything to solve the problem.”
“I absolutely agree with Mark when he says that the WOU foundation divesting will not impact the industry in any quantifiable way,” Plec said in an email Wednesday.
For Amspacher, divestment is about doing the ethical thing. “Western’s foundation by itself is not going to have a big impact,” Amspacher said. “While it’s just symbolic, if other schools follow what we do, then it loses its purely symbolic action and it becomes something with a tangible impact.”
Though both sides may be in agreement that divesting will have little-to no impact on fossil fuel companies, the question has been raised whether or not
it could hurt student scholarship money brought in by the foundation.
With the first American college, Hampshire College, Mass. having divested in 2011 according to gofossilfree.org, quantitative data of divestment’s impact is hard to come by. This leaves Love unsure of the consequences when it comes to student scholarship money.
“To say that by having our school divest, our financial returns won’t be hurt is untrue and unpredictable,” Love said in a presentation to ASWOU Jan. 14 according to senate minutes.
In the 2013-2014 fiscal year, the foundation awarded $663,669 in scholarship support.
Love said the risk of losing financial returns and hurting scholarships for students is prevalent.
“We have the moral obligation to provide as many scholarships as we can,” he said. “At this time the foundation is not looking to divest.”
“Some universities have received new donations specifically because they divested, and it is possible that some donors do not support divestment,” said a Jan. 22 memo from Plec and VanSteeter addressed to faulty senate.
However, “Some of our most significant contributions for the benefit of students and our campus have come from individuals in the business chain of big oil,”
Weiss said in a Wednesday email.
In a follow-up phone interview, Weiss said, “Just in the past two years, we’ve gotten approximately $3 million from donors that have ties to energy.” Some significant donors have ties to road construction companies or major trucking
companies, he added.
Weiss said he wants to see the conversation shift toward solving global warming and what can be done on campus.
Love said just because the foundation doesn’t support divestment doesn’t mean they’re not interested in a discussion on climate change.
Plec said the environmental club will focus the rest of this term on educating the campus. Beginning this term, they will also work to give the foundation incentive to divest. This will be done through divestment initiative donation
request forms given out to organizations, institutions, donors and individuals.
Money raised from pledges would work to offset any possible short-term negative financial divestment consequences. The form can be found on the environmental
club’s Facebook page.
“Whether or not we succeed with divestment, we’re going to measure our success by how informed and thoughtful people are about the issue,” Plec said. “I think when you make real social changes, there’s a lot of leg work involved.”
Finding a way to make divestment profitable for Western is the environmental club’s new goal. Plec said it’s time to “put our money where our ethics and values are.”
