NOV 21, 2024 | NEWS | By Olivia Link
To many people, the purpose of a liberal arts education is to provide students with the ability to think critically about the world around them: to raise a generation of forward-thinking, informed global citizens who will challenge and reshape the status quo. But what happens when these challenges are directed at the very institution aiming to foster them?
These questions have been raised recently in light of protests and calls for divestment from Colorado College’s chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP).
The issue of student activism is not unique to today; in fact, CC has had its fair share of encampments, demonstrations and petitions for divestment, from South African apartheid to fossil fuel companies to Israeli military armaments. To illustrate this trend, here is a brief timeline and history of student dissent – as well as coverage of if and how the administration and Board’s responses have changed over time.
Catalyst archives indicate that students began to question endowment investments in 1977, when the paper published an article revealing that CC had at least 96,970 shares worth $3.5 million ($18 million in today’s dollars) invested in companies earning money in South African apartheid. The student governing body at the time, the Colorado College Campus Association (CCCA), along with the newly formed CC Corporate Responsibility Project, appealed to the Board of Trustees to sell all securities in companies conducting business in South Africa. The Board refused, in what was to become the beginning of a long and arduous disagreement. As a 1978 Catalyst article points out, the Board’s response may have been due in part to a conflict of interest on behalf of William Spencer of the Spencer Center, whose company Citicorp had 10,000 shares owned by the school. Citicorp loaned $767 million ($3.7 billion today) to the South African government between 1974 to 1976.
As public awareness of the realities of South African apartheid spread, so did nationwide movements calling for institutional divestment. Workers went on strike, consumers boycotted and students disrupted academic operations to make their voices heard. In April of 1984, the Colorado College Community Against Apartheid (CCCAA) was formed to raise awareness of the apartheid regime and the role of US corporations in upholding it. They also aimed to pressure the college into divesting shares from the 19 complicit companies in CC’s portfolio. CCCAA’s first encampment popped up in 1986, with students living in tents reminiscent of the makeshift dwellings Black South Africans were forced to inhabit. This camp was short-lived though, as an aggressor – thought to be another student – drove their car through the encampment, prompting students to take down the structures.
In 1985, CCCAA approached the Board and proposed the creation of a shareholder advisory committee to deal with the issue of social responsibility, most notably regarding South Africa. The Board agreed, but ultimately rejected the committee’s recommendation to divest, stating that it was not a popular movement across the entire campus community. In response to this rebuke, CCCAA increased campus-wide efforts, and by 1986, it had received signatures from 1,032 students and endorsements from 21 student organizations, including student government. Faculty voted 60 to 8 (with four members abstaining) in favor of a resolution to divest, while two Catalyst polls showed the majority of students supported divestment.
On March 14, 1987, the Board of Trustees decided not to divest.
CC’s Black Student Union (BSU) and the College Citizens Active For Peace (CCAP) organized the campus’s second encampment in 1989. Students camped outside Worner and fasted ahead of the Board’s Nov. meeting in hopes of reigniting pressure on the college. They also distributed solidarity armbands and put up signs on drinking fountains, bathrooms and doors specifying usage for “Netblankes” (Europeans) or “Netnieblankes” (non-Europeans) to mirror the segregated facilities common in South Africa. Ultimately, CC did not join the over 150 American universities to divest from apartheid.
While South Africa’s apartheid rule came to an end in 1990, scientists around the world were beginning to speak out about the environmental and humanitarian impact of it. There are records of students broaching divestment from an environmental perspective as early as 1993. In Oct. of 1998, the Socially Responsible Investment Committee (SRIC) held its first meeting. The committee, yet another attempt from students and faculty to encourage investment transparency and alignment to school values, aimed to make student input part of the investment process. They became part of a three-pronged voting system for the college’s investment policies: one vote for the President, one for the Board and one for SRIC. These branches would evaluate a proposed minority proxy or a resolution proposed by a minority shareholder regarding the unethical practices of companies the college invests in. If two of the three branches agree on the proposed resolution, CC either submits it to the company, or, more rarely, divests their shares.
In 2011 students discovered that around 5% to 10% of the endowment’s shares were held in companies like Monsanto, Halliburton and ExxonMobil, which profit from environmentally destructive practices. During the 2012-13 school year, the Student Divestment Committee (SDC) formed and presented a report on the moral obligations to divest from fossil fuels and the economic opportunities in investing in the growing market of renewable energy. The Board rejected this proposal, stating that their “fiduciary responsibility and duty [is] to invest with the sole goal of maximizing returns on the endowment.”
Student proxy voting on environmental issues began to wane by 2013, when former assistant treasurer Stacy Lutz Davidson told The Catalyst that there had “been no student participation this year.” The previous school year saw students from the Sustainability Club voicing their opinions with JW Bristol and Co., who managed 29% of the endowment at the time. Bristol only manages higher education investment, meaning they have an established procedure for transparency and social responsibility talks with students. This is not the case for many of the Board’s other investment managers; those who control the investments often do not know where the money is invested due to non-disclosure contracts. While student proxy voting allowed the campus community to feel they had a say, it may not have always been that effective for the majority of CC investments due to a lack of voting power and transparency.
The SDC conducted several actions following their unsuccessful measures beginning in 2013. They collected around 1,200 student signatures in favor of divesting, demonstrated outside board meetings and set up encampments on Worner Quad. A student protest in Rastall Dining Hall depicted the union of the fossil fuel industry (dressed as Darth Vader) and his tiger bride where an unofficial priest joined the two in “twisted matrimony.” In the fall of 2023, ten years later, the Sunrise Club and CC Reinvestment Coalition acted out a renewal of vows to remind students of the Board’s inaction.
By 2015, the SDC had created an alumni fund called the Colorado College Responsible Endowment Fund. The CCREF collected alumni donations contingent on the Board’s decision to divest by 2016. The Board voted against divestment, and the fund was dissolved. As leaders of the movement graduated, its momentum weakened significantly; the May 1 deadline for CC to freeze new investments in fossil fuels and make plans to fully divest within five years passed with no action by the Board.
The symbolic renewal of vows between CC and oil companies last fall was part of a resurgence of student activism on the subject. At their Nov. 27 town hall meeting, the Board announced a few changes: they vowed to prioritize selling all directly-owned oil and natural gas wells and established yet another committee dedicated to fossil fuel issues.
Board chair Jeff Keller’s email to the community after this announcement acknowledged student actions related to the genocide in Gaza but did not mention the demands made by pro-Palestinian students in the town hall.
Thus far, the Board has continued not to pursue divestment as the conflict escalates in Gaza. SJP and JVP drafted a petition in response to the Israeli escalation after the events of Oct. 7, and last spring, students staged an encampment on Tava Quad from May 2-15. Leaders of this encampment, the Colorado College Liberation Zone, agreed to dismantle it in exchange for a meeting with the Board, immunity for those involved in the protests and divestment from Israeli companies and arms manufacturers more broadly. These promises have not been fulfilled. Many students have faced serious conduct cases and their Nov. meeting with the Board was canceled and replaced by the Oct. 30 Investment Committee meeting.
According to alumni activists who spoke at a homecoming weekend panel entitled “Legacies of Activism: Anti-Apartheid Divestment, and Colorado College,” there are a few new difficulties students pushing for divestment face today. Former student Kiernan Hixon believes that intellectual freedom at CC is more repressed now than it was in his time: he told audience members that students’ access to free speech has been “quashed” by the administration, prompting him to wonder, “What has my college turned into?”
Former CC Librarian Cat Finney also pointed out that it was, and remains, difficult to monitor accountability around divestment. Matt Case ‘88 agreed, adding that the switch to portfolio investment provided another obstacle to modern movements.
CC shares are now controlled by several managers investing in a variety of funds, which makes divesting extremely complex and expensive. Despite these challenges, some alumni expressed their admiration and support for student efforts to hold the college to its own highest ideals.
After the promised November meeting with the Board was canceled, student activists spoke to the investment committee on Oct. 30, 2024. Rather than focus solely on divestment from Israeli companies, SJP and JVP have reframed their demands toward the creation of a streamlined process for changes in investment policy enacted by students and faculty involving a committee similar to Brown University’s ACRUM. SJP and JVP hope to inspire board members to call an emergency meeting of the board to further explore the idea of a student-staff oversight committee.
Investment Committee Chair John Troubh ‘79 wrote in his Oct. 15 email that more information regarding “stocks directly held in the CC endowment will be shared quarterly.” It is unclear how much information will be made public due to portfolio non-disclosure contracts.