Location: Upper Sayles
Time: 3:30 pm
Secretary: Claire Milsted
CRIC Minutes for April 8, 2011
Applications for CRIC
Isaac Hodes will send out applications for new student CRIC members around the middle of term.
Joel Weisberg and David Tompkins will go on sabbatical next year; we will need to find new faculty to take their place. We discussed the issue of who should replace him.
SI2 vs. ICCR
Fadi had to leave the meeting early because of quiz bowl nationals in Chicago, but he shared his findings about SI2 vs. ICCR.
Fadi recently contacted Heidi Walsh about SI2. The annual fee is $7,500, which is much more than we pay for ICCR (we believe that ICCR’s annual fee is $2,000 but we will check with Jane Hubbard to make sure.)
Fadi got temporary access to SI2, and he verified that it would be more useful—they have briefing papers, profiles of filers, and keep track of history of engagement. The problem is that it may not be worth the extra money, especially considering that we are limited to resolutions filed before the end of our winter break. It might be worth it if we found a way around this issue. We can have a conference call with her around mid-May to listen to any suggestions she might have.
Update on SRI at Stanford
It turns out that the SRI language Stanford has instituted is not in its actual investment policy but rather in a separate charter. Apparently adding such language to the investment policy is unprecedented and would take up a lot of time and resources. We may contact people at Stanford, University of Pennsylvania, and Hampshire college (all of which have such language but in separate charters) to discuss the utility of such language.
Update on SRI at Oberlin
Earlier, Jason Matz had brought up the fact that Oberlin has a special socially responsible fund to which alumni can direct donations. We found out that this fund is not very popular; this fact may be due to lack of publicity. If we were to create such a fund, Christopher Clark might be able to use his position as Executive Director of Alumni Annual Fundto help to promote the socially responsible fund.
Broadening the role of CRIC
There are two areas in which we could expand our role: filing and voting.
1. Voting: One major factor limiting us is the fact that we can only advise votes on resolutions filed before the end of winter break. Perhaps we could try to fix this, however, doing so might not be possible without changing our policy to circumvent the trustees on some level. The trustees would probably react negatively to such a suggestion.
2. Filing: Another possibility is that we could become involved in the filing process. There is the issue of cost—we would have to pay a fee if we were to file ourselves. However, we could engage with people who file frequently and do research for them (as Amy Domini mentioned, research can be an issue for filers outside of academia) as well as suggest future resolutions that could be filed.
We can also sign petitions and write letters to CEO—petitions are in the works via REC to deal with hydraulic fracturing and political contributions, two issues that have been important to us recently.
3M meeting
Some members of CRIC will attend the 3M shareholder meeting to discuss political contributions. On CRIC’s advice, Carleton voted for a shareholder resolution at 3M to limit such activity. The filers of that resolution have invited us to come, so the issue of securing tickets won’t limit us. We cannot speak directly for Carleton, but we can speak as members of CRIC and comment on what the trustees voted for and why.