Location: Sayles 253
Time: 3:10 pm
Present Melissa Thomas, Vicky Wu, David Alberg, Doug Marshall, Anil Methipara, David Coleman, Fred Rogers
Secretary: Jenna Greene
1) Prepare for Trustees Meeting
a) Content. What are the main points we want to make sure to convey?
b) Organization. Structuring/ordering of content for presentation.
c) Responsibilities. Who is going to present what?
Structure the conversation based on the letter that the Board of Trustees sent us, a simple response:
1. Fiduciary responsibility: Would divestment affect our endowment?
- Depends on time frame that we look at, we didn’t do a study
- Lit review: looked at different studies, no clear conclusion to infer
- Why would it be such a low-risk situation?
- Because we don’t have a lot of direct holdings in fossil fuel companies, only a small amount would be divested
2. The political statement of divestment: Must prove why this is a worthy cause
- Acknowledgement that the college has already taken significant steps towards climate change mitigation, this is a logical next step
- This is not unprecedented
- Ethical nature of this divestment decision
- Extent of negative impact justifies the consideration of divesting on this issue
- We think that it is an ethical issue as outlined on pg 9-11, our final conclusion.
3. The board will focus on the effectiveness/impact on any decision based on results that it would achieve, would it be effective?
- Page 16, last point (2.4)
- Page 12
[Minutes were taken only for the first half of the meeting and will be updated as more information becomes available]