Location: Upper Sayles

Time: 4:30 pm

Secretary: Claire Milsted

CRIC minutes for November 12, 2010

Speaker

We have a speaker.  Her name is Ami Domini. 

Plans and suggestions.

I.                    Speaker

a.       Scheduling of events is an issue.  We would like our speaker to do an event at the athenaeum, because there students can ask more questions and engage in a conversation with the speaker.  Such an event would ideally happen after the convo… but unfortunately Friday afternoon + evening are a busy time for most students.  There will be a lunch but that is usually not very well attended.

b.      We may ask her to do a talk on Thursday.

c.       Also we would like her to speak with us, and possibly even with the trustees.  David Tompkins will contact her about this.

d.      Perhaps Divya could introduce the speaker.  Then she could also make a plug for the CRIC.

II.                  Plans for winter break work

a.       Amanda will re-divide the alphabet so that the work of researching companies is more evenly divided.

b.      Over break, everyone should look at resolutions from the companies which they have been assigned.  When looking at resolutions we should consider Carleton Values.

     NOTE: Our strongest values as a college are probably diversity and environmental protection.  This is because we have produced a diversity statement and an environmental statement as a college.  Values discussed in surveys can be brought up in our discussions of these resolutions, but they are not as firmly established.

c.       Everybody must send in their schedule before break ends.  Kristen Vellinger (who will be returning next term) and David Schlosser can then put together a schedule.

III.                Categorizing

a.       Categorizing will mostly occur after break.  David Schlosser will take the resolutions in which we are interested and group them into categories.

b.      Political contributions may be a big category this year, even though they were not on our radar last year.

IV.                Ethvest

a.       We have been receiving email alerts from Ethvest; this is a good new thing.

b.      However, we should remember that the emails are not exhaustive; we should still be looking at things on Ethvest independently of the email alerts.

c.       The name on the account is Jane Hubbard’s; this is why all the alerts seem to be being requested by her.

Regarding Jason Matz’s visit

Last week, Jason Matz, the Chief Investment Officer from the Investment Office, came to our meeting.   He mainly discussed the way in which the investment office operates, and the limitations which this places on our work at the CRIC. 

The main limitation is the fact that not very much of the endowment is invested in stocks that are in our custody; most of the endowment is in funds.

We also learned about the idea of a socially responsible fund that alumni can choose to give to.  Oberlin has such a fund.  Perhaps we should propose one for Carleton.  

However, a reasonable argument against such a scheme is that people who give to Carleton usually give because they want Carleton to have more money, not because they are thinking about responsible investment.