Fossil Free Northwestern aims for Northwestern Board of Trustees divestment in fossil fuels

Since its foundation in 2012, Fossil Free Northwestern has pressured the school’s Board of Trustees to “...build a sustainable endowment that refuses to fund climate change, pollution, or injustice.” The student group is backed by the national movement Fossil Free, which aims to build more sustainable communities through the divestment of the fossil fuel industry paired with a reinvestment in the green energy sector. 

Divestment as a direct action to inhibit climate change is a movement proposed by Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org. McKibben states that in order to take down the fossil fuel industry, one must eliminate its pillars of support. This not only includes removing investment, but also extends to withholding mining permits, eliminating access to natural resources such as land and water, and most importantly, withdrawing social support from the industry. 

Despite years of pushing for divestment, this movement has not yet gained the national platform it hoped to acquire, in part from a lack of political support from the left, but also due to other pressing social issues that entered public discussion at that time: the Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements. 

However, American universities have recently shown an influx in student organizations pushing for divestment, one successful movement being University of California’s recent pledge to remove their $150 million of investment from the industry. The movement continues to pick up steam, seen on national television during the annual Yale vs. Harvard football game aired on November 23 of this year as a massive crowd of students rushed the field before the game to pressure both school presidents to divest. After an hour-long standoff between protesters and police, 42 counts of disorderly conduct were issued to the students who refused to leave the field. 

Fossil Free Northwestern, though, hasn't seen this national exposure. Despite recognition from President Morty Shapiro in 2012, over 3,000 votes on a student petition for divestment in 2015, and the organization of a Global Divestment Day campaign on campus in February of 2015, there have been no formal statements made about Northwestern’s stance on fossil fuel divestment. A timeline of the organization’s past efforts can be viewed here. 

In January of last year, Fossil Free Northwestern submitted a formalized divestment proposal to the Advisory Committee on Investment Responsibility (ACIR), created by the Board of Trustees to facilitate conversation between the Board and the public in the form of proposals. ACIR voted unanimously (one vote with comments) to pass the proposal onto the Board of Trustees, and after a bit of editing, it was given to the Board in June. The Board has yet to respond. 

“The board has had it for five months,” said Olivia Stent, Fossil Free Northwestern Director of Special Events, “and we have heard nothing.” 

Fossil Free organized a flooding of ACIR’s open meeting on November 7 in the Guild Lounge at Scott Hall, where so many students showed up that chairs continually had to be brought in for increased seating before the meeting began. Members of ACIR even commented on the amount of people present at the meeting, recalling times where there were only a handful of people that came to open meetings.

“I think sometimes [ACIR] thinks, ‘Oh, this proposal is just from like ten angry kids in a classroom,’ but its not,” Stent said. “It's been years in the making.”

Chair of ACIR, Phil Greenland, updated those in attendance that they still have not heard back from the Board of Trustees. This announcement was followed by a statement from Fossil Free Northwestern and Students for Justice in Palestine, and questions from the attendees, primarily undergraduate students. The meeting took the full hour it was allotted.

Stent expressed frustration with the proceedings, explaining that its difficult to know anything about the Board of Trustees process for reviewing their proposal. While frustrated that the proceedings have been slow and ambiguous, Stent explained that this waiting still isn’t a denial from the Board, and the group is doing what they can with this time. 

“ACIR had a closed hearing before the open meeting,” Stent said, “and we were expecting then to be told ‘no.’” In this outcome, the group would have spent this year rewriting and resubmitting the proposal. Since they have not received a denial from the Board, though, their efforts are centering around continuous campus awareness and support, and increased transparency with the Board’s decision making process. The group, and student supporters, have not stopped action in this waiting period.

In the hopes of furthering these goals, Fossil Free created a petition, calling for the following from the Board of Trustees:

The student group has harnessed student support; the petition has well over a thousand signatures. 

Fossil Free also held a photoshoot with a banner that read “NOBODY WINS WHEN NORTHWESTERN INVESTS IN FOSSIL FUELS” before heading out as a group to the December 6 climate strike in Chicago, furthering their publicity on campus.

Stent expressed that with an issue related to climate change, where things are getting worse every day, this campus awareness and a response from the Board are vital.

“A lot of people know about this,” Stent said. “A lot of people want an answer. A lot of people want to divest.”