GREEN UNIVERSITY
Students for Renewable Energy, a student-led club at Western Washington University, has been pressuring their school to pull investments out of fossil-fuel companies since 2014. Five years later, it looks like they are making progress.
Story by Olivia Klein| Photos by Jacob Carver
Every Tuesday night, around ten Western Washington students meet in a wood-panelled classroom to figure out how to break ties between the university and the fossil fuel industry. On a recent week, the agenda called for letter writing and zine folding. The group chatted about their club’s weekend snowshoeing retreat while they prepared for a tabling event in the campus’s main courtyard the next day.
Students for Renewable Energy, a club at Western Washington University, has been pushing towards fossil fuel divestment since 2014. Their goal is to end the the Western Washington University Foundation’s investments in fossil fuel companies, but they are still struggling to make progress. In March 2019, an important contract for the foundation’s investment manager, Common Fund, faces renewal. This contract may be an opportunity to break new ground towards institutional sustainability.
Jill MacIntyre Witt, the club’s faculty adviser, said the movement’s beginning can be traced back to 2011.
In November of that year, 350.org, an international environmental network, started a campaign that called on students to pressure their universities to pull funding from fossil fuels investments.
“Several club members from [Students for Renewable Energy] went to the launch in Seattle and decided that the campaign was something they wanted to pursue here at Western,” MacIntyre Witt said.
In 2014, Students for Renewable Energy collected 500 student and staff signatures, received letters of support and sent letters of their own to the Western Washington University Foundation, MacIntyre Witt said.
The foundation manages all donations and gifts given to the university from alumni and outside donors. Western’s foundation is then tasked with allocating the money towards university departments or investments.
In these letters, Students for Renewable Energy made three major requests of the foundation: divest from 200 environmentally-unfriendly companies within five years, stop future investments in fossil fuels and incorporate fossil fuel divestment into university policy.
The foundation rejected the requests, but claimed to be committed to sustainability and created a ‘climate-friendly fund’ as a compromise.
“There is a fund that we’ve purchased that is a green fund, and it’s available for those donors to put those gifts in if they so choose,” said Mark Brovak, chief financial officer of the Western Foundation. Since the fund was created, two donors have contributed.
According to Brovak, the university has limited say in where investments end up because of the need for a third-party management company. Common Fund, who has offices across the country, was hired by Western 20 years ago and is in charge of how investment funds are allocated. They create portfolios that distribute the university’s total investments between many companies. If one fails, the others soften the blow.
The foundation would not disclose specific details of their investments to The Planet magazine.
Since most of these portfolios include a mix of investments, sustainable companies can be lumped together with fossil fuel companies and become difficult to untangle. Brovak is concerned that divestment away from all portfolios that include fossil fuels could mean less money for Western’s future.
Divestment campaigners were not satisfied with the foundation’s response and tensions continued to rise, Brovak said. After the University’s response in 2014, students marched through campus to express their concerns.
“Students are generally here for four years and that’s a short window,” said Brovak, who attended some of the events and spoke with students. “They’d like to see something happen during the time that they’re here and I understand that.”
In 2016, it became clear to the Students for Renewable Energy that a change in strategy would be necessary to achieve their goals, said Emma Nordlund, a sophomore and environmental science major who serves as a sustainable investing representative for the club. They decided to cooperate more with the administration and center their message on sustainable investing.
“Instead of divestment, in which funds are pulled out of anything bad, sustainable investing means pulling some funds out and reallocating them,” Nordlund said.
Galen Herz, a recent Western alum and former member of Students for Renewable Energy, said he would be more encouraged to donate to the university if he knew his donation was going to sustainable industries.
“I believe many other alumni would feel more compelled to donate as well,” Herz said.
For members of Students for Renewable Energy, like Nordlund, the group’s efforts are about making any difference they can.
“It’s scary to see climate change actually have an impact on all these aspects of our life. We need to do something,” Nordlund said.
Western students are not the only ones pushing for divestment. More than 150 schools and institutions worldwide have succeeded in divesting from fossil fuels, according to 350.org.
The divestment process may have been more straightforward at other universities, Brovak said. Western doesn’t have as much flexibility as some other institutions because of their need for a third-party investment manager.
“Our endowment is about $86 million, a relatively small endowment compared to the size of [others] and bigger schools have on-board investment groups and investment managers. They do all these investments directly,” he said.
Every five years, the foundation sends out a request for proposal to different investment managers to find out the details of their portfolios and costs of their services. This time, Students for Renewable Energy are working with the foundation in the process of choosing the best investment manager.
The foundation board will vote to decide which bid they will accept in mid-March, after this Planet issue goes to press (see The Planet website for updates). If Common Fund wants to renew its contract with Western and compete with other managers, they will need to create a new folder of investments called an environmental, social and governance (ESG) folder, which includes socially responsible options, Brovak said. If they don’t do this, Western can either respond to proposals made by other investment managers, or remain with Common Fund.
According to 350.org, ESG investments have increased to over $8 trillion, 15 percent of which are affiliated with educational institutions.
Although the foundation and Students for Renewable Energy are on friendly terms, the groups have different priorities. The foundation wants to return profit from their investments back to the university while Students for Renewable Energy wants to support organizations that make a difference.
“I give our students a ton of credit for bringing this up and for helping make the foundation and make me aware,” Brovak said. “We’ve taken steps that I think they will appreciate and feel good about when we get there. And we’ll get there soon.”
