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Frustration Over Divestment Issue Comes to a Boil at Bowdoin

Patty Wight
/
MPBN
Bowdoin Junion Allyson Gross, one of the organizers of the sit-in.

BRUNSWICK, Maine - Students at Bowdoin College are staging a sit-in at the president's office to urge the school to divest from fossil fuels. The students say the president and the board are dragging their feet. They're demanding the school form a committee to explore divestment. But school officials say the president and the trustees have already met with students, and their position is clear.

The sit-in started at 8:30 Wednesday morning when about 30 students walked into the president's administrative offices. An hour later, a pile of sleeping bags, along with boxes of Fruit Loops and Cheez-Its filled one corner. Students sat quietly on the floor in the waiting area and along a hallway. Many of them typed on laptops to do school work or social media for their organization Bowdoin Climate Action.

Junior Allyson Gross is one of the organizers. "We are here today to show the college that if they won't take action, we will."

Gross says Bowdoin Climate Action has been working on fossil fuel divestment since 2012. Last spring, students presented Bowdoin President Barry Mills with a petition signed by students and faculty supporting divestment. In the fall, students met with the board of trustees to make their case.

Gross says since that meeting, the board and President Mills have been playing hot potato over whose responsibility it is to advance the divestment idea. After nearly 150 days with no answers, Gross says students are now prepared to stay in the president's office until their demands are met.
 

Credit Patty Wight / MPBN
/
MPBN
Bowdoin students participating in a sit-in line a hallway Wednesday morning at the Brunswick college.

"Our demand is, essentially, calling for the college to appoint a committee consisting of members of the board of trustees, faculty, and students from Bowdoin Climate Action to investigate and figure out how the college can understand what divestment at Bowdoin would look like, and the most responsible way it could pursue that pathway," Gross says.

"President Mills has been considering this issue for a long time, and so, also, has the board of trustees," says Doug Cook, a spokesperson for Bowdoin College. "While he shares their deep concerns about climate change, he has explained his opposition to the largely symbolic act of divestment. And since that time, the arguments for divestment have not changed. Nor has the view of President Mills that the college should focus its efforts on education and effective action to confront this very real negative consequence of climate change."

More than a dozen other schools in Maine and the U.S. have divested or taken steps to divest in fossil fuels. Unity College was the first in the nation in 2012. The University of Maine announced it would divest from coal companies in January, and on Tuesday, Syracuse University announced plans to end "direct" investments in fossil fuels.

But this movement has drawn criticism, in part because extracting fossil fuel investments from portfolios is complicated. In February of 2013 the Bowdoin student newspaper, the Orient, reported that 1.4 percent of the college's endowment is invested in fossil fuels, but divesting would require a 25 percent turnover of holdings.

Other critics say it removes personal responsibility to take action on climate change. But Bowdoin sophomore Michael Butler disagrees with that view. "The people that are really embedded in this crisis are corporations, institutions, and our government," Butler says. "So, basically, fossil fuel divestment is a way that Bowdoin can vote on this issue."

Butler points out that in 2006, Bowdoin divested in companies doing business with Sudan in response to the genocide in Darfur. Members of Bowdoin Climate Action say climate change is the defining issue of their generation, and they're ready to stay in the president's office for as long as it takes to ensure the school will at least pursue the possibility of divesting from fossil fuels.