Location: Upper Sayles
Time: 8:30 am
Present Joe Concannon, Mihaela Czobor-Lupp, Danette DeMann, Ellen Farnham, Fadi Hakim, Forrest McKnight, Daniel Groll.
Absent Ben Bedore, Bakhtawar Chaudhary, Chris Clark, Maile Cupo, Duncan Sallstrom, Fred Rogers.
Secretary: Claire Milsted
Disclosure of Direct Holdings at Peer Institutions
During the past two weeks, Daniel Groll looked into the question of which other schools disclose their direct holdings. He found about six institutions that do, but among these six institutions, there are slightly different policies about how students can access information on the holdings (is it kept in the library; is it on a password-protected site; etc). He has also been in touch with Middlebury College regarding their recent decision (in concert with Dickinson College) to put some of their endowment in a socially responsible fund. We agreed that we will either skype or arrange a conference call with them.
Plans for the Fall
Last meeting, we had discussed doing a town-hall meeting on our endowment. Such a meeting could help us raise the issue of disclosing our direct holdings. It would also be easier than other types of events because the college encourages town-hall meetings. Ellen looked into town-hall meetings this past week and found that the procedure for setting one up is really vague. If we do a town-hall meeting, it will have to be in the fall, and we will probably have to do more research into questions such as how to get funding for the meeting.
We can send around petitions regarding disclosure. Ellen had the idea that instead of asking for individual signatures, we could ask student organizations to endorse the petition. Organizations such as SOPE or WHOA House would probably be interested.
Heidi Walsh of SI2 offered to schedule a conference call with us about these issues.
Meeting with the CSA Senate
On April 30th, Fadi met with the CSA Senate to ask them to approve changes to our charter. They were ambivalent about the changes and told Fadi that CRIC should go to the College Council with this proposal. They also said that Daniel Groll should be at the meeting, because he is the faculty chair.
3M Meeting
The 3M meeting was not cancelled after all. Maile, who is a campus driver, will drive to the meeting with Forrest, Fadi, and Duncan. We discussed the logistics of using campus vehicles.
Spreadsheet
The spreadsheet of al of our proxies is almost complete. We discussed finishing the spreadsheet for a few minutes at the end of the meeting.