Investment change

An effort launched last year by two Chico State students to stop the university from promoting fossil fuels took a giant step forward Dec. 10, when the University Foundation board of governors voted to liquidate within the next four years the school’s holdings in mutual funds whose investments support such businesses.

Professor Mark Stemen credits students Olivia Longstaff and Kaitlin Haley with the university’s move to divest from some 200 companies that deal in gas, oil and coal energy sources. The two students sat on the school’s Environmental Affairs Council, which initiated the divestment campaign last spring and then brought it to Stemen’s Geography 440 class, Environmental Thought in Action.

The students worked to get the matter on the Associated Students’ ballot as an advisory measure and 80 percent of the students who voted supported the move. Efforts to get it before the University Foundation stalled a few times, but at its December meeting the board, acting on a motion by university President Paul Zingg, voted 8-4 to pass a resolution calling for divestment.

According to a press release, the foundation, which manages gifts and endowments for the university, “currently has no direct holdings in fossil fuel companies, and just under 2 percent of its portfolio in managed funds that include fossil fuel investments.”

The resolution to divest was drafted by environmental studies student Kevin Killion, who was also part of the divestment movement, A.S. President Taylor Herren and other students, with input from university staff.

Zingg welcomed the resolution, as evidenced by the fact he made the motion to pass it.

“I was very pleased with the decision of the board and proud of our university in accomplishing this decision,” Zingg said in an email. “The performance of our students was gratifying and impressive.”

The mutual fund the foundation will sell to separate itself completely from the fossil fuel industry is called Vanguard 500. Its estimated worth is about $500,000, which will be invested into fossil-fuel-free mutual funds, and the school fund manager will keep an eye out to make sure that none of the funds they do buy have fossil fuel investments.

Stemen said the idea of divestment was started in so-called public-good institutions, which include churches, hospitals, libraries and universities.

“The idea is that organizations that purport to do a public good should not be investing in any industry that does a public bad,” he said.

He credited the student backers of the proposed divestment for their consistent and, at the same time, courteous drive to get the matter before the foundation.

Back in April, Haley explained the push behind the effort: “Our campus is called a sustainable campus and we have all these different programs working toward making it more sustainable,” she said. “It doesn’t go along with our morals to be invested in fossil-fuel companies, which contribute to climate change.”

Zingg reflected that notion this week.

“The bottom line is alignment of our enacted values with our professed values,” he said. “The draft announcement underscores several contexts for this decision. In other words, it is consistent with our words and previous deeds in these matters.”

Redirecting the investments will be up to the university’s financial manager, Zingg said.

“The important point is that they will be redirected as the resolution requires,” he said. “Not sure of the ultimate redirection, except that it will not be in the 200 fossil fuel companies prescribed in the resolution. Chico State is in the forefront of this movement.”

Chico State will indeed be among the first public universities to fully divest from the fossil fuel industry.

“The students made not only an environmental but also an economic argument for divestment,” Stemen said. “That these companies are vastly overvalued and the stock market is proving that true.”