Location: Upper Sayles

Time: 8:30 am

Present Daniel Groll, Chris Clark, Danette DeMann, Forrest McKnight, Kristen Vellinger, Sara Hooker

Absent Max Bearak, Joe Concannon, Mihaela Czobor-Lupp, Ellen Farnham, Fadi Hakim, Fred Rogers, Iris Wang.

Secretary: Claire Milsted

Event Recap

We hosted a talk this past Thursday (10/20/2011) at 6:30 PM in the Athenaeum.    At least 15 people who were not a part of CRIC showed up, which was good.  The problem was that it ran long, and the explanation of what CRIC actually does didn’t come up until a few minutes the very end.  Also very few people signed the petition.

We discussed how we should keep in contact with these people.  Perhaps we could update our website so that they can better understand what CRIC does.  Maybe we could involve them in research, although they are probably busy.

SRI contest for students

Sara brought up the idea of an SRI contest for students, where students compete to pick the best socially responsible portfolio.  We would need additional guidelines to reflect the fact that Carleton’s conservative attitude towards risk. 

This project would gather some data on SRI, but a more importantly, it would get students from outside CRIC involved in a significant way with SRI.

We could start the competition in late winter or early spring, after we are done with all the proxy-voting work.

Proxy Voting and Beyond

If we are going to engage in proxy voting, our report is due at the end of January.  Danette will be gone during the last week of January.

Should we do something beyond proxy voting? Some other possibilities include

1.       Creating a policy for proxy voting, so we can get proxies through more efficiently

-Another possibility would be to use a “case law” system, where the re-approval of proxies that are very similar to previously-approved proxies is streamlined.

2.     Asking the trustees to move a very small piece of the endowment to a socially responsible fund, such as TIAA-CREF’s responsible investment fund or the Acumen Fund.  Such an investment would be small, but it be a good source of information for us.  This could also be synergized with the SRI contest.

3. Changes to the investment policy that take externalized/social cost into account.  It would be difficult to convince the trustees of this, given that no other institution seems to have done it.  However, Carleton might enjoy a reputational boost from being the first institution to have done so.

Maybe we could do proxy voting with a more “case-law” system for the February meeting with the trustees, and then discuss the other issues (particularly making a small investment in an SRI fund) when the trustees come again in May.

It might also be a good idea to contact Amy Domini for advice about this.