SAVE president Danielle Jordan posted on SAVE’s facebook page about an hour ago:
BIG WIN, SAVE!
The faculty senate voted, unanimously, to support our divestment campaign. They also voted to condemn and reject the BOT response letter.
Way to go, everyone! We’re making progress!
S.A.V.E. never gives up, and the VSU Foundation provided fuel for the fight. -jsq
Dr. William J. McKinney
President
Valdosta State UniversityDear President McKinney,
Thank you very much for agreeing to be a part of our ceremony for the new solar canopy this Friday. We are excited for it, and we are glad that you will be able to come. We definitely appreciate your support, and we hope to have a nice turnout!
As happy as we are about VSU’s continuing efforts to “go green,” I am writing to you in regard to S.A.V.E.’s ongoing fossil fuel divestment campaign and the recent response we received from the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the VSU Foundation. If you have not yet read the letter, I have attached a copy for your convenience.
We were clearly disappointed to hear that
our request had been denied, but what troubled us the most was the condescending tone used by Mr. Edwards in the last part of his letter. To end his letter on University (not Foundation) letterhead with sarcasm and cavalier dismissal of our concerns is unacceptable, especially as we have acted in a respectful manner throughout this process. Within his response, Mr. Edwards downplays the importance of practicing social responsibility and belittles the validity of past divestment campaigns that have been used to counteract injustices such as South Africa’s Apartheid regime, which represented an inhumane and repressive system that needed to be challenged.
We also find Continue reading
Dr. Richard posted this letter to the editor of the The Spectator, VSU’s student newspaper, on SAVE’s facebook page today. I added the links and the images. -jsq
To the Editor:
I would like to address the VSU community with this letter.
VSU Students, faculty, and staff, did you know that many of the clothes that we admire and purchase in the USA are made in places like Bangladesh? Indeed, some of our most popular brands of clothing, including GAP, Old Navy, and Banana Republic originate there. Perhaps you know that many Bangladeshi clothing manufacturers employ children as young as 12 years old who earn as little as $32 per month despite working up to 14 hours a day? It’s little wonder that so many of us can look so stylish—and for relatively little money.
If you didn’t already know this, does it matter to you now? Are you concerned that the money you spend supports sweatshops in Bangladesh
and elsewhere, perpetuating the misery of millions of our fellow human beings? Undoubtedly many of us are concerned, and we understand that we can make a difference in the world by being more judicious about where we shop. It’s why we choose to buy groceries at worker-friendly Publix rather than Continue reading
A copy of what the VSU Foundation called the “
“well-intentioned request” by
Students Against Violating the Environment (S.A.V.E.).
I added the links and images.
-jsq
October 17, 2013
Dear VSU Foundation and Board of Trustees,
Recent years have brought climate change to the forefront of public discussion.
A newly released report from the United Nations indicates with 95% certainty that humans are the primary cause of the issue. It is our concern that the continuation of our current practices and our dependence on fossil fuels will only result in continued environmental degradation and human struggle. Knowing the impact that anthropogenic climate change has upon our environment, our health, and our economy, we are asking Valdosta State University to take a stand and join in the effort to address this issue, as social responsibility is part and parcel to the role of public institutions.
As a public institution, Valdosta State University has a responsibility to shape the debate about climate change through its voice, and fossil fuel divestment is another medium for that voice. We are asking that VSU immediately Continue reading
The VSU Foundation knows more than 98% of climate scientists,
and also sneers at former divestment from tobacco and apartheid companies.
Nevermind that
fossil fuel divestment is going faster than either of those.
Is it good fiduciary responsibility to stay invested in the stranded investments
of fossil fuel stocks while
solar stocks are skyrocketing?
Is this really how to encourage people to
give to VSU?
Is that how
the alumni
want their investments used?
Seen today on S.A.V.E.’s facebook page, VSU Foundation’s response to S.A.V.E.’s fossil fuel divestment request:
Danielle Jordan, President
S.A.V.E.
Valdosta State UniversityDear Ms. Jordan,
The Investment Committee of the VSU Foundation Board of Trustees has reviewed the request from your organization that securities issued by companies engaged in the production of fossil fuel energy be excluded from the foundation’s endowment portfolios. Compliance with your well-intentioned request is impractical for a number of reasons and perhaps even a breach of the fiduciary responsibility that all of our trustees take very seriously.
The various VSU Foundation endowment portfolios are managed Continue reading
Not just
faster than apartheid divestment;
faster than divestment from tobacco, armaments, and others:
fossil fuel divestment.
It’s not about direct reduction of market capitalization;
it’s about making it socially unacceptable to buy from stigmatized
companies, and it works, and it’s working faster than ever for fossil fuels.
Oh, and fossil fuel companies are a tiny sliver of university endowments,
so ditching them is pain free,
especially now that
fossil fuel stock prices are not rising while solar stocks skyrocket
(and nuclear stocks don’t).
Go fossil free, go VSU.
Stranded Assets and the Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign: What Does Divestment Mean for the Valuation of Fossil Fuel Assets?
8 October 2013 | Authors: Atif Ansar, Ben Caldecott, James Tilbury
|
A campaign to persuade investors to take their money out of the fossil fuel sector is growing faster than any previous divestment campaign and could cause significant damage to coal, oil and gas companies, according to a study from the University of Oxford.
Continue reading
The report compares the current fossil fuel divestment campaign, which has attracted 41 institutions since 2010, with those against tobacco, apartheid in South Africa, armaments, gambling and pornography. It concludes that the direct financial impact of such campaigns on share prices or the ability to raise funds is small but the reputational damage can still have major financial consequences.
SAVE‘s fossil fuel
divestment request made the
front page of
The Spectator at VSU,
and Danielle Jordan of SAVE was pullquote about fossil fuels
in another front page story, about solar panels on the Odum Library.
The student government didn’t vote to support SAVE’s request, but
many senators said they didn’t understand the subject and the student
government asked to get educated
about
fossil fuels and divestment.
Jordan Barela and Von Kennedy wrote for The Spectator 24 October 2013, Solar panels bring green energy to Odum,
VSU is moving in a greener direction.
A solar canopy was recently built behind Odum Library.
“We cannot address climate change without decreasing our dependency on fossil fuels and solar is one way we could change that.”
—Danielle JordanThe canopy is a 10 kilowatt solar array. The canopy produces energy that goes directly to Odum Library, and does not go to the Georgia Power grid.
Construction of the solar canopy began in September, and was finished earlier this month.
“It is exciting,” Danielle Jordan, president of Students Against Violating the Environment, said. “We cannot address climate change without decreasing our dependency on fossil fuels and solar is one way we could change that.”
The solar panels were manufactured by Continue reading
Should Harvard President Drew Faust
worry that
“Significantly constraining investment options risks significantly constraining investment returns”?
Actually, if Harvard has been wasting investments in oil and gas for the
past year, its endowment has lost a bundle.
Ditto VSU.
Let’s compare stock performance of Guggenheim Solar ETF (NYSE:TAN) which invests in solar stocks with the PowerShares DB Energy Fund (NYSEARCA:DBE), which invests in oil and natural gas companies. Yep, that’s 120% for TAN and 0% for DBE:
Sure, if you go back farther, solar stocks continued to drop after 2009 until this year: Continue reading
Our investments ARE political.
And that’s just as true at VSU.
Not even Tim DeChristopher put it more pithily than that. Samantha Caravello wrote in the Harvard Law Record 7 October 2013, Pres. Faust, There’s Nothing Neutral About Investing in Climate Wreckage, noting that Pres. Faust’s excuses were actually in response to “an invitation from undergraduates to participate in an open forum on divesting Harvard’s $32 billion endowment from the top 200 fossil fuel companies.”
President Faust warned against using the endowment in ways that would position the university as a political actor, claiming Continue reading
Answering Harvard President Drew Faust’s excuses,
Tim DeChristopher, who went to jail for directly opposing gas and oil drilling and is now a student at Harvard Divinity School,
To seriously suggest that any research will solve the climate crisis while we continue to allow the fossil fuel industry to maintain a stranglehold on our democracy is profoundly naive.
Wen Stephenson wrote for the Nation 4 October 2013, Tim DeChristopher: There Is No ‘Neutral’ in the Climate Fight, including DeChristopher’s statement:
Drew Faust seeks a position of neutrality in a struggle where the powerful only ask that people like her remain neutral. She says that Harvard’s endowment shouldn’t take a political position, and yet it invests in an industry that spends countless millions on corrupting our political system. In a world of corporate personhood, if she doesn’t want that money to be political, she should put it under her mattress. She has clearly forgotten the words of Paolo Freire: “Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and powerless means to side with the powerful, not to remain neutral.” Or as Howard Zinn put succinctly, “You can’t be neutral on a moving train.”
She touts Continue reading
