The Campus Times Editorial Board proudly supports the recently proposed Students’ Association Senate resolution demanding the administration “immediately freeze any new investments in fossil-fuel companies,” and to divest from those it already has a financial interest in within the next five years.
Passing the resolution, proposed by Senator Joey Stephens, with the backing of the Senate Student Life Committee, Students for a Democratic Society, Grassroots, and Greenspace, would reflect well on SA’s ability to pass obviously positive legislation.
The resolution also calls for the formation of an Environmental and Social Responsibility Advisory Committee in order to ensure community-wide input and awareness of the machinations of the university Investment Committee, a measure that we also fully endorse.
There is already an urgent need to combat the catastrophic effects of global climate change, the impact of which has begun to be felt all over the world. UR, as a forward-looking institution that names “responsibility” as a communal principle, must support this resolution.
As the resolution notes, UR created the University Council on Sustainability in 2008 and tasked it with “creating a University-wide vision for environmental sustainability.” Though positive steps toward sustainability are visible all over campus, we do not exist in a vacuum. What UR does within the larger context of universities and its role in fighting climate change matters, and the administration would do well to remember that.
And if all of that isn’t reason enough to convince the administration of the worthiness of this proposal, many of our precious peer institutions have already committed to some form of this already.