It's time for DePauw's campus to have a serious conversation about sustainability - the long-term, unselfish environmental efforts to support the earth's well being. Our university has supported this movement so far, ending the sale of water bottles, increasing recycling, participating in Energy Wars and even pressuring President Casey to sign the President's Climate Commitment in 2008. These have all been genuine steps down the road to sustainability.
But there are still opportunities to increase our sustainability commitments. A new campus movement, Divest DePauw, is illuminating one of the most obvious and crucial ways that our University can commit to sustainability: divestment from fossil fuels.
Divestment is a complex issue. It is the process to end investments in certain fields and redirect those funds, sometimes to another movement, sometimes in general.
Divest DePauw focuses on the $500 million endowment controlled by DePauw's Board of Trustees. The Divest DePauw movement hopes that by 2020, the University endowment funds should be absent of "any direct ownership and any commingled funds that include fossil-fuel public equities and corporate bonds."
Scientific data is overwhelmingly clear: sustainability movements will play a crucial role in preventing the permanent environmental damage caused by the burning of fossil fuels. If humans fail in this effort, the global ecosystem will face disastrous consequences. Excessive use of fossil fuels contributes to the national droughts, heat waves and devastating hurricanes that we have recently witnessed. Student and administrative initiatives to educate and reduce fossil fuel abuse have paved the way for divestment. It's time for us to join together in the next step.
Thus far, 315 colleges and universities have started divestment campaigns, and four have successfully contracted a university-approved divestment plan. A similar national divestment movement occurred in the 1980's, attempting to dismantle the apartheid system in South Africa.
Today, our administration needs to step up and put its money where its mouth is. If we want to have a sustainable campus, we can't continue to use our endowment to invest in the fossil fuel industry. On April 13, DePauw's student body will be taking part in a rally to demonstrate to President Casey that we are committed to stopping the use of carbon emitting fossil fuels that are destroying our environment - and demand that the university stop supporting the companies behind the destruction. Thirty years from now, it is our hope that we will be able to look back on this divestment movement and be able to show that we were on the right side of history.
- Repko is a junior from Canton, Ohio majoring in conflict studies and women's studies.