Is Divestment Dead?
An interview with Senator Lorenzo Spaccarelli, speaking on the current status of divestment from fossil fuels.
Leah Brent: What is divestment and why would you say it is important for Pacific to engage in?
Senator Lorenzo Spaccarelli: Divestment, in the sense that we are using it today, is the university getting out of investments that are deemed somewhat problematic. The university has an endowment, and this endowment is basically a big pot of money to fund stuff like scholarships for students, as well as to support many of its programs and athletics and all sorts of other things. This big pot of money is kept in the stock market. It invests it in order so that it can grow over time and continue to support all of these programs without it depleting. When they take this big pot of money and invest into the stock market, they may have to make decisions as to what stocks and what opportunities they buy. What happens, unfortunately, is that these investments include fossil fuels and a variety of other really problematic industries that personally I consider to be quite problematic, and I know many of the other students do. So, divestment is encouraging the university to divest or “un-invest” from fossil fuels and other industries that are considered harmful.
Leah: Thank you so much. So, the next question I have for you regarding divestment is what were the past developments and commitments that were made by administration in regard to divestment?
Lorenzo: So, this has been a slow conversation over time, and I can't say that it started with me either. President Callahan has informed me in some of the discussions that he's been interested in this since he arrived at Pacific. Having said that, there has been more progress over the last two years that I've been able to see. And the main commitment that occurred in Spring of 2023, so about six months ago now, when the Board of Regents met and they decided to make the first tangible steps to divesting the university's endowment from fossil fuels. This followed continual pressure from ASUOP and other interested student groups. I think one of the big events that prompted it was the divestment forum that ASUOP was able to host, but also many other events and initiatives from a lot of interested students who don't believe that the university should have millions of dollars invested in an industry that is damaging our future.
Leah: To sum up, there have been previous conversations and commitments by administration for this cause. Are there any new updates regarding divestment? And is the university staying dedicated to its previous commitments to divestment?
Lorenzo: Well, see, that is a more difficult question, one that requires a little bit of unpacking. So, after the Board of Regents, along with President Callahan and our Chief Finance Officer James Walsh, made the decision to begin the divestment process, it moved forward rather slowly. And so I think there was an article in April of 2023 that came out that said that Pacific is committing to divesting.
Its endowment didn't give a certain time period or anything like that, but was committing to divesting from fossil fuels, which was fantastic. Personally, it's one of the goals that I've been working towards, so I was very glad to hear that. Since that point, there has been a team that has been assembled that includes student representatives such as myself, as well as faculty. I think there's faculty, but there's definitely staff as well as members of the Board of Regents to look at how we can divest slowly over time and get out of some of the investments that we have that are a little bit problematic. It's a slow process. There's a lot of details there that I'm not going to get into. But regardless, you can't snap your fingers and get out of fossil fuels entirely. It's going to take a little bit of time, but the continual pattern of that has still been slow. And I think one of the big things that worries me is the change that occurred to the article. The article that said that Pacific was committing to divesting from fossil fuels, changed to say Pacific's investment strategy will now “include environmental considerations.”
I personally can't say I know for sure why they changed it, but it was definitely disappointing to me because I viewed that progress as an accomplishment for the student body and an accomplishment for Pacific. And I'm really worried to see them sort of backtracking away from that. And I would encourage the Pacifican to follow up and try to figure out why the article was changed.
Leah: And I can see why that would be concerning and also a little bit frustrating as well, thank you for your input on that. Where do you see divestment going? Where do you hope it goes?
Lorenzo: Well, one of the things that the university is considering right now is committing to I think it's the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investing. Might be worth checking that, but I'm pretty sure that's the name and it is a move by the university to align itself with some of the standards that have been set out for investing more responsibly. And of course, this standard extends not only across fossil fuels, but as well as principles referred to as ESG within the industry of investment, and that is environmental, social and governance broader, including stuff like gender equity within a company, racial equity within a company, paying workers well, that kind of thing. So there's a broader category there. Personally, I've been focusing on fossil fuels and getting out of that industry because I view that as the absolute most urgent thing. But I believe that a broader conversation about investing via those kinds of ESG principles is ongoing. And I know Vice President of DEI Lomax-Ghiraduzzi is having some of those conversations on her end as well. So that's one thing I really hope. The other big goal that I have, and I know that some of the people on this divestment committee have as well, is a divestment dashboard. And what that means is a public dashboard, a website of sorts, where Pacific students and basically anyone else interested within the Pacific community can look online and see how our investments in fossil fuels have changed over time. The goal is to be able to track our decline as we slowly but surely get out of fossil fuels. That's the goal that has not yet been implemented. The timeline for that is unknown. But that's something that I think would be really great, and I think that would be a really important way for the Pacific community to ensure that the university is meeting its goals with Divestment and hold them accountable so we can see those patterns over time as the university gets down to zero, hopefully within the next five or ten years.
Leah: Yes, definitely. Finally, what is ASUOP’s role in divestment and more broadly, the role of the student body as a whole?
Lorenzo: Yeah, well, of course. So ASUOP well, I'll take a step back and first say that I'm not unbiased and that clearly I'm a Senator. I've advocated through ASUOP for this continuously, basically, since I started, and I want to go back to the beginning a little bit here. So my first awareness of this began when I started my term as a Senator in Fall of 2021 under the leadership of Arshita Sandhiparthi. She began the Senate Sustainability Committee, in which one of our main goals was to advocate for divestment. We had a number of meetings, including with people on the Board of Regents. That first year we got it on the docket. People knew that students wanted this, and that was supported through a variety of conversations that we had had as Senators with our constituents to ensure that they were interested in this kind of activity. So that's one thing we pushed the next year under the leadership of Senator Marissa Gandolof-Gillaspy. We continued that work and we really emphasized it over the course of the year.
So the first major event we had was a divestment forum in the Fall of 2022. And that was dedicated to getting students from across campus who were interested in environmental stewardship and climate change into the room to have a discussion about the importance of divesting from fossil fuels, getting those millions of dollars that we have invested in fossil fuels out. And we saw people from environmental clubs on campus. We saw people from the Eberhardt School of Business representing the student investment fund come. We got a variety of stakeholders to come and discuss the issue. The discussion was pretty clear that students wanted us to not engage in this sort of we didn't want investing in fossil fuels to be the method for Pacific to continue offering these scholarships and these programs. We wanted some other way. So that was what was concluded. And ASUOP has been trying to continue to facilitate that and as those sorts of intermediaries between the student body and what students are talking about and the university administration, we've continued to put pressure on the university to continue. To with its commitments and to continue to divest, especially with some of the most polluting divestments with regards to the student body as a whole. And what the students can do, they can reach out. The Board of Regents will pay more attention if students reach out. And it is sometimes hard to think about it this way, but when it comes down to it, students are customers of the university, and we are paying $70,000 a year to come here and attend. The university will listen to us if the students speak up and advocate for this very tangible thing that is very much so within the university's control, the university has the authority to divest. So, if students advocate for this, either by talking to university administrators, talking to their student government leaders, forming clubs, engaging in protests, anything that they could want to do to show their support of this initiative, that will translate directly to further progress on these issues. And that's what I would really encourage the student body to do, is to advocate in any way they can if they believe that this issue is an important one that needs to be recognized and dealt with.
Citations:
https://www.pacific.edu/event/asuop-divestment-forum
