January 18, 2011 Meeting

Location: Upper Sayles

Time: 12:00 am

Secretary: Claire Milsted

CRIC minutes for January 18, 2011

Withdrawal of various resolutions

In our research this week, we have discovered that various resolutions were recently withdrawn.

-A Goldman Sachs executive compensation resolution was withdrawn because Goldman Sachs challenged it at the SEC.

– Child Labor in the Tobacco Supply Chain (Philip Morris International) was also withdrawn.

We will keep an eye out for further withdrawals.

Review of the list

We did another brief review of most of the items on the list and discussed which points we should make when writing and presenting for the trustees.

A.      Code Protecting Children: Carnival Corp

-Carnival Corp does not have a Human Rights policy, nor have they signed the code protecting children.  Even if the code doesn’t change things much, it’s better than nothing.

-The Code was created by a UN-backed group and is gaining adherence among other corporations (including in the tourist industry); it would help Carnival Corp’s image if they signed on too.

-Since governments are having difficulty stemming the issue of child trafficking, corporations have a special obligation to help

B.       Hydraulic Fracturing (Toxic Chemicals): El Paso, Exxon Mobil

We will use the same basic arguments as last year, but with slight revision and updating to reflect changes in the past year.

C.      Adopt Greenhouse Gas Reduction Goals – Report: Exxon

-Existing goals are insufficient; Exxon is a leading figure in the energy industry and should take a stronger stand.

-Carleton environmental values: We have GHG reduction goals and made an official statement about our environmental priorities.

-There is a possibility of more GHG regulations in the near future; implementing voluntary GHG reductions would allow Exxon to be prepared for this possibility.

D.      Adopt Political Contributions: 3M, EOG Resources, Goldman Sachs

AND Political Contributions – Global Warming: Occidental Petroleum

-Corporate self-interest:

a. Bad publicity for company when donations that were supposed to be done secretively are made public (3M also got bad PR for contributions to the Emmer PAC).

b. Money invested in political contributions is money that can’t be invested elsewhere (e.g. in technological upgrades).

-Transparency is important.

-Specific to the Occidental resolution: Oil companies quietly tried to campaign against California’s existing GHG regulations; this ties into Carleton’s democratic and environmental values at Carleton.

E.       Separate Chair and CEO: Exxon, Goldman Sachs, IBM

-The financial crisis seems to have vindicated the separated system; since the crisis BOA and Citibank have switched from a nonseparated system to a separated system.

-A separated system prevents conflicts of interest; this would help both corporate responsibility and financial health.

-A separated system allows specialization of CEO/Chair roles.

F.        Sexual Orientation and Non-Discrimination: Exxon Mobil

-Most of the Fortune 500 have written Non-Discrimination policies.

-Exxon Mobil claims to have an unwritten nondiscrimination policy; this means that little work would be required to create a written one.

-A written policy would send better signals to potential employees.

-Diversity is a clear Carleton value.

G.     Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO): Home Depot

-This resolution would send better signals to potential employees AND would help them avoid lawsuits.

-The resolution does ask Home Depot to make a report, but this would not be an onerous burden—they need to collect and report a lot of this information as it is.

The Report

We need to finish the report quite soon.  We will divide into pairs for this week.  Assignments are due Saturday at 5 PM. 

Last year’s report to trustees was 30 pages including the appendix.  We should try to avoid having any one section be more than two pages (not including the appendix).  We can streamline the appendix by including links/references instead of full text.

Working Pairs

Because there is still work that needs to be done (and many people are now resolutionless) we created the following teams of two for the remaining work.

Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO): Home Depot: Fadi and David S.

Adopt Greenhouse Gas Reduction Goals – Report: Exxon: Joe and Amanda.

Political Contributions: Joel and David T.

Human Rights – Develop and Adopt Policies: Raytheon: Divya and Vivaan.

Separate Chair and CEO: Divya and Vivaan.