NC State currently holds over $1.4 billion in the endowment fund, which is used to invest in various aspects of the university, including scholarships. The endowment fund doesn’t just sit there when it isn’t being used though: It is given to the UNC Management Company to invest and gain further returns to put away in NC State’s “rainy day” fund. Investing in fossil fuels is one of the industries that the NC State endowment goes toward, and our university isn’t the first to encounter this problem.
Various other schools are on the cusp of divesting their endowment funds from supporting detrimental industries, but few have succeeded. Those few, however, have created a road map for those universities that are looking to do the same.
The first major public university to divest from direct fossil fuel holding is the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Through the staging of various demonstrations calling to divest and gaining endorsements from the Board of Directors of the UMass Foundation, the school’s campaign successfully committed to continuing its investment in environmental science research and to continue the lowering of greenhouse gas emissions. UMass conducted the campaign with the intention of being a leader in sustainability while also being mindful of the university’s fiduciary responsibility.
Heading a little closer to home, Warren Wilson College began working on their divestment campaign in the fall of 2013, with their moral obligation in mind to not only move the college away from investing in the fossil fuel industry, but also to mitigate the social license for certain companies to operate.
The students at Warren Wilson College campaigned through gathering petition signatures, passing resolutions through the student government and presenting a strong case for divestment to the investment committee. Likewise, Pitzer College in Southern California held a similar campaign with one minor twist: They kicked off the campaign by coming directly to the investment committee in the spring of 2013.
NC State isn’t the only institution ripe for fossil fuel divestment. UNCA Divest was created in 2015 with the goal of divesting from fossil fuels, and they are currently in the process of submitting a proposal to request to manage UNC-Asheville’s own fund, considering the fund currently “profits off of huge fossil fuel companies [and] pipeline projects,” according to the James Smith, the coordinator of UNCA Divest.
As demonstrated through the efforts of various universities around the States, divesting from fossil fuels has been a swiftly growing movement. NC State should follow the leading universities that have divested from fossil fuels. As a top university in North Carolina, we need to set an example and divest from the fossil fuel industry. Also, as the midterms are coming up, we as voters should vote for politicians with the intention to move us forward.
Iman Usmani is a fourth-year studying statistics and is an executive of Climate Reality Project at NC State.
