Location: Sayles 252
Time: 4:00 pm
Present Staff: Fred Rogers Faculty: Mike Hemesath, David Lefkowitz Students: Nora Mahlberg, Alex Persaud, Nathaniel Rosenblum, Cristina Sainati
Absent Shannon Schulz, David Schlosser, Eilidh Higgins
Secretary: Laura Garlock
As it was the last meeting before the Investment Committee meeting this Thursday, CRIC continued to prepare to meet with the Board of Trustees. Nora and Nathaniel, who will be presenting to the Board, met since the last CRIC meeting to work out their talking points. In their meeting, they discovered that CRIC’s recommendations to the Trustees are strong for how early on in the year it is. To back up its assertions, the committee will cite President Rob Oden’s signing of the Campus Climate Survey assessment, which can serve as an endorsement for CRIC’s aims. Nora and Nathaniel will meet again to rehearse the presentation. While Nathaniel and Nora are in charge of the majority of the presentation, other CRIC members may help answer the trustees’ questions.
CRIC has decided on three general topics of proposals to recommend: sustainability initiatives, health care reform principles, and the right to water. Sustainability is the largest category, having three sub-categories: sustainability reporting, compact fluorescent bulbs, and mountaintop removal. CRIC has already submitted recommendations on these proposals to the Board of Trustees, and will summarize them during the presentation on Thursday, in addition to addressing any questions or concerns the trustees have. During the presentation, CRIC will communicate that most of these proposals are simply guiding principles rather than mandates, and therefore are not very risky to implement.
During the meeting, there was some debate over the extent to which CRIC should support these proposals and the potential costs these proposals may inflict upon the companies, and as a result, Carleton. This was particularly the case with the mountaintop removal proposal, which has the firmest stance. The committee also debated over whether it should emphasize the trade-off of the proposals (in terms of financial effects on Carleton) to the trustees, or whether it should make recommendations strictly based on ethics, leaving the decision of cost to the Investment Committee. In any case, the committee agreed that foreseeing the long-term effects of any of the proposals would be difficult.
After the meeting with the Board of Trustees, CRIC will turn its attention to distributing the survey, which it hopes to do this term, membership in the committee for next term and next year, and the year’s report on the committee.