Ben Goloff is a member of the Class of 2015, and is currently working on a Masters at Oxford in environmental governance. Digging for slugs – muddying my fingernails, dodging bits of plastic or used Band-Aids – my sense of struggle as a five-year old New Yorker was simpler than it is now.
The divestment movement has escalated in recent weeks due to a coordinated effort on college campuses in Mass. and beyond. As they lined both sides of a hallway in UMass Amherst’s Whitmore Administration Building last week, dozens of students chanted “Ain’t no power like the power of people, ’cause the power of people don’t stop.”
In response to President Valerie Smith and Chair of the Board Tom Spock Last week, President This Thursday, three Swarthmore Honorary Degree recipients, labor organizer and anti-war activist John Braxton, linguist, philosopher Today, Swarthmore Mountain Justice called on Board members Rhonda Cohen ’76, Samuel Hayes III ’57, and
We write in response to the Feb. 25 guest opinion, “Board Members’ Conflicts of Interest in Regards to the Fossil Fuel Industry Leave Us No Choice but to Escalate”. Many of the assertions in the piece are unfounded and present a distorted picture of the efforts the Board and the administration have undertaken.
On January 27th, Swarthmore Mountain Justice revealed the considerable conflicts of interest held on the part of three Board members, Rhonda Cohen ’76, Samuel Hayes III ’57, and Harold Kalkstein ’78. As of June 30, 2015, firms associated with these three Board members held more than $25 billion worth of investments in energy companies, severely compromising the integrity of any board decisions on divestment.
In the three days since negotiators reached an agreement in Paris, I’ve seen the deal heralded as everything from “the world’s greatest diplomatic success” to “just bullshit” . There seems to be little consensus as to whether COP-21’s outcome was phenomenal, devastating, or even meaningful whatsoever.
by Lee Smithey This op-ed appeared in The Phoenix on Thursday 25 February 2016 This past weekend, the Board of Managers at Swarthmore College approved an internal charge on greenhouse gas emissions. We should mark what appears to be an initial step toward developing a carbon pricing model.
The College is sending its 3rd annual delegation to Paris for COP21. Read the delegation’s daily blog updates here. In 2013, the College applied for and was granted NGO observer status to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ( UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP).
Swarthmore College, the epicenter of student protest last year over investment in fossil fuels, has budgeted $300,000 as part of an ongoing commitment to improve energy conservation on campus. The college’s board of managers, at its meeting last weekend, approved the expenditure as part of a $160 million budget.
On the Friday before Board of Managers meeting, activist group Mountain Justice (MJ) held a rally to once again call on the board to divest and deliver a previously published letter to the president’s office. The next day, the board announced a new sustainability-motivated carbon charge initiative, but made no public mention of divestment.