ASuop Senators Comment on Recent Divestment Forum
written by Marissa Gandolfo-Gillaspy and Lorenzo Spaccarelli
Students Serving Students; it’s an empowering statement. At ASuop, everything we do is organized around this goal. We, while being students ourselves, work diligently to advocate for and support our constituents and our peers. For us, Senators Marissa Gandolfo-Gillaspy and Lorenzo Spaccarelli, climate change and climate action are a key component of that support. As one of the most pressing global issues, climate change threatens our collective future; as young adults in 2022, we live at the exact right time to witness the wanton destruction of our atmosphere and to see the consequences of those actions impact our lives in ever more devastating ways. Both of us believe that we cannot, in good conscience, claim to support students while overlooking this key issue. To that end, we have advocated relentlessly for the university to divest its endowment from the fossil fuel industries that are impacting us.
The story of this move towards divestment begins with Senator Emeritus Arshita Sandhiparthi (‘22). During the 21-22 academic year, Sandhiparthi pushed for the Sustainability Committee to take an active role in advocating for divestment and led the Committee through everything from meetings with the Regents to analyses of the university’s endowment. We learned that tens of millions of dollars are invested in fossil fuels, supporting companies that are damaging the environment and risking our collective future. However, all of this work was behind the scenes. This year, Lorenzo and I made the decision to bring the issue to the attention of students in a big way.
While the Regents we spoke to always engaged in conversation and were willing to consider divesting, they had not and still have not made a commitment to a divestment timeline. Lorenzo and I decided that perhaps the Regents would feel a greater sense of urgency and purpose if they realized that students truly believed in the critical importance of this issue. We concluded that the best way to engage with our peers on this issue would be if we hosted an event to inform students about the issue and demonstrate that the student body believed that action on this issue was critical. So, on November 4th at 6pm, we hosted a divestment forum for students to discuss divesting our university endowment from our sizable portfolio of fossil fuel companies.
Said forum was a collaboration between ourselves, the Environmental Conservation Club (ECC), and Sustaining Pacific. The ECC is a student club organized around the protection of the environment, both locally and broadly. Sustaining Pacific, on the other hand, is a university department dedicated to increasing the sustainability of what we do at Pacific. Representing the widely held belief among the student body that climate change is impacting and will have ever greater negative impacts on their future, all three organizations believe that divestment by the university is a crucial first step to reducing said impacts.
The event was a remarkable success. The turnout was about thirty students, a profound statement of interest in the part of the student body. Students spoke who represented such diverse groups as the Student Investment Fund and the ECC, with our VP of Student Life also engaged in the conversation. We were even fortunate enough to have a guest speaker: Miriam Eide, a representative from Fossil Free California, an organization dedicated to divesting the pension fund for California state employees from fossil fuel. We in ASuop are grateful to all of our speakers and especially to the students who showed up for the event.
ASuop’s work to push for divestment is just beginning. The Senate Sustainability Committee will maintain pressure on university leadership and the Board of Regents to make a commitment to moving forward on the issue. If the situation sees significant developments, Lorenzo or I will communicate that to you as quickly as we can. However, we can promise the student body this: we will strive for a public divestment timeline by the end of the academic year.
The discussion about divestment and sustainability does not end here. We would love to hear from you as to your thoughts on this issue or on any sustainability-related topic. Please feel free to contact me at m_gandolfogillapsy@u.pacific.edu or Lorenzo at l_spaccarelli@u.pacific.edu!