OCT 31, 2024 | NEWS | By Seth Jahraus
Some of the campus body has perceived the Colorado College Board of Trustees as an inaccessible entity. Students have regarded the Board as a governing body “cowering behind” the often scapegoated administration, and in recent years, the prominent way in which students have been able to access the group is through a show of force.
The recent cancellation of a Nov. meeting between the Board and pro-Palestine student representatives reaffirmed the group’s untouchable track record. However, after a reschedule of the canceled meeting, six members from CC Students for Justice in Palestine and CC Jewish Voices for Peace were able to meet with the Board’s investment committee alongside other Board members on Oct. 30.
A small crowd of about 20 students and five faculty members gathered outside the Spencer Center conference room to support the student representatives, displaying signs calling for a ceasefire and divestment from Israel. The group discussed the recent divestment decision and presented a proposal for the formation of an advisory committee who would oversee the Board’s investment strategies going forward.
“We have student voice through CCSGA, we have student voice through the student trustee, but the things that dictate life on this campus: the money, the tuition dollars, the everything, that’s what people are deeply invested in, and there’s no formalized set of expectations as to how to go about that,” said one of the six student advocacy representatives who presented at the meeting who decided to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation from the campus community.
On Oct. 15, the Board announced in an email to the campus body that they would not be pursuing divestment from companies that enable, facilitate or benefit from the conflict in Gaza. Investment Committee Chair John Troubh said the decision came after the investment committee voted to recommend the Board against divestment which the Board then voted to accept.
Troubh said the divestment proposal submitted by CCSJP and CCJVP was “discussed at length” by the committee, but he was unwilling to disclose the exact reasons for the committee’s rejection. When asked why the board made the divestment decision prior to the student proposal meeting, Troubh said there are many factors that influence the calendar which he is not a part of.
Following the Board’s decision, the student advocates decided to focus on the creation of the investment advisory committee as opposed to furthering their previous divestment proposal. The students believed that the establishment of a committee for student voice within the Board would seek to accomplish a larger goal.
“When we first started calling for divestment, if this committee existed, we wouldn’t have had to do the encampment, we wouldn’t have had to do months of protest, we wouldn’t have had to escalate in the ways that we did,” said representative Mackenzie Wagner ‘25. “There would have been a pathway forward and a way for students to raise their concerns.”
The group is hoping to emulate Brown University’s Advisory Committee on University Resources Management (ACURM), which is a group that analyzes Brown’s investments and their ethical implications. Earlier this month., ACURM ruled in an 8-2 vote that divesting from 10 companies proposed by the Brown Divestment Coalition would have little social impact due to the minimal amount of actual investments the college had in said companies. Brown’s financial board accepted ACURM’s recommendation and chose not to divest.
The CC advocates don’t wish to copy ACURM’s bylaws, however, they hope to provide a similar structure for their respective Board which would allow student insight into the nearly $1 billion endowment.
Troubh and Jeff Keller ‘91, the chair of the board, wrote in the Oct. 15 email informing the campus of the divestment decision that “information on stocks directly held in the CC endowment will be shared quarterly.”
Troubh said that the investment committee is trying to get that information to the public “as soon as possible,” however, not all stocks will be made available.
CC’s portfolio is advised by Partners Capital Investment Group which oversees the college’s investments and financial managers. Most managers under Partners Capital have non-disclosure agreements that prevent their portfolios from being shared. CC must wait to bridge these agreements before making any information public, however, CC hopes to have stocks managed by Bristol Capital, CC’s largest investment manager (handling around 30% of CC’s investment funds) available to the campus body roughly by the end of the year, according to Troubh.
There is currently no established timeline for the progression of the formation of the investment committee proposed by the students. Wagner said that the students’ current primary demand is that the Board publicly acknowledges their meeting. In the future, the student advocates plan to write the committee proposal, submit it to the President’s Council and schedule another meeting with the Board at some point later in the year.