{"id":6714,"date":"2014-12-15T19:32:39","date_gmt":"2014-12-15T19:32:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/?p=6714"},"modified":"2014-12-15T19:32:39","modified_gmt":"2014-12-15T19:32:39","slug":"at-northwestern-university-baby-steps-are-the-key-to-divestment-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/at-northwestern-university-baby-steps-are-the-key-to-divestment-success\/","title":{"rendered":"At Northwestern University, baby steps are the key to divestment success"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest post by Christina Cilento. Christina is a sophomore at Northwestern University studying sustainability and management. She’s been working with DivestNU for a year and a half, where she helps coordinate events, meets with administration and recruits new members. To find out more about DivestNU, visit their website<\/a>, and “like” the Divest Northwestern page on Facebook<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

As a member of Northwestern University\u2019s coal divestment movement, I can say\u00a0firsthand that making progress is harder than it seems. Since DivestNU\u2019s beginning\u00a0two years ago, it\u2019s been all about taking baby steps towards our goal. In 2012, our\u00a0campaign kicked off by passing resolutions supporting coal divestment in our student\u00a0government and faculty senate.<\/p>\n

The same year, we collected about 1,500 signatures\u00a0in a petition<\/a> endorsing our movement and began meeting consistently with our Chief\u00a0Investment Officer. Despite this strong start, we were frustrated by consistent denials\u00a0of our requests to access the key stakeholders in our campaign: the Board of\u00a0Trustees.<\/p>\n

Three weeks ago, that finally changed, and we met for the first time directly with a\u00a0Trustee. DivestNU had written a letter to the Investment Subcommittee of our Board\u00a0explaining the history of our movement, the importance of divestment for\u00a0Northwestern\u2019s leadership, and the dangers of climate change if action isn\u2019t taken.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0week later, six of our members, our Chief Investment Officer, and the chair of the\u00a0Investment Subcommittee sat down to talk about divestment. We had a great\u00a0conversation– we talked about the human rights impacts of climate change, the\u00a0shifting perception of coal, the viability of other investments, and student support for\u00a0divestment and sustainability.<\/p>\n

Perhaps naively, we hoped to walk away from that\u00a0meeting with an answer. What we got instead was a thank-you for our time and an\u00a0invitation to continue the conversation around divestment– definitely not a \u201cno,\u201d but\u00a0also not a \u201cyes.\u201d Still, we believe that meeting was a strong first step– baby step, of\u00a0course.<\/p>\n

Following that meeting, we wanted to show the Trustees that divestment is not just\u00a0an important issue for us, but for all of Northwestern\u2019s community. Luckily for us,\u00a0they were meeting on campus the next afternoon. That night, we stayed up way past\u00a0our bedtimes painting a banner, contacting student groups to ask if they would sign\u00a0on to it, and rallying people to show up for a demonstration to support our\u00a0movement. In the morning, 35 students came to march with us to the building where\u00a0the Trustees would arrive, holding our banner with large green letters that shouted\u00a0our message: NU Cares About Climate Change<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"Students<\/a>

Students of Divest Northwestern outside their Board meeting<\/p><\/div>\n

While standing outside for the hour\u00a0before the meeting, we passed out informational sheets to Trustees as they entered\u00a0and held some productive conversations. Not everyone was interested in what we\u00a0had to say, but I think seeing a group of chanting students out in the Chicago cold on\u00a0a Friday spoke to students\u2019 passion for this movement, and put divestment on\u00a0Trustees\u2019 minds.<\/p>\n

Our march and meeting with the Trustees were two influential steps toward coal\u00a0divestment. After two years of work, we may not be in the place we had envisioned,\u00a0but we\u2019re certainly getting there. Moving forward, we hope to have consistent\u00a0meetings with Board members to discuss divestment face-to-face. <\/p>\n

We plan on\u00a0reaching out to the Board again to request student presence at their next Investment\u00a0Subcommittee meeting in January or February. And we will continue to give\u00a0Northwestern students an outlet to tell the university that it is time to take climate\u00a0change seriously. Small strides? Maybe. But if there\u2019s anything I\u2019ve discovered, it\u2019s\u00a0that it takes a march of baby steps to end up with big results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest post by Christina Cilento. Christina is a sophomore at Northwestern University studying sustainability and management. She’s been working with…<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":6715,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[152,124],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-divestment-2","category-education"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}