EDITORIAL: Trustees Should Trust Us

When polls for Student Government elections opened on March 30, students may or may not have noticed a frankly worded referendum underneath the candidates’ names: “Should Boston University divest (stop investing in) the fossil fuel industry?”

The question itself had its start in the Feb. 1 meeting of the Student Government Senate, where leaders from Students for a Just and Stable Future proposed polling student opinion on divestment. On Feb. 16, the Senate agreed, with 23 votes in support of, seven against and two abstentions from a yet-unwritten, non-binding referendum, The Daily Free Press reported on Feb. 17.

All of this is well-grounded in precedent. Though no formal laws refer to referenda in its constitution, SG issued a referendum 12 years ago on whether or not BU should fund a sexual assault crisis center, according to an article in the FreeP from March 23, 1993. For the trustees’ part, BU divested its holdings in companies operating in Apartheid-era South Africa in 1979, and divested its holdings in companies doing business with the Sudanese government in 2006.

In considering divestment proposals, the Board of Trustees and its Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing, which advises the Board on such matters, state that they make such decisions rarely, and only when “the degree of social harm caused by the actions of the firms in the asset class is clearly unacceptable” and “any potential negative consequences of the decision … are clearly outweighed by the importance of taking the divestment action.” Holding a referendum on fossil fuel divestment reasons that BU students should have a say in whether or not the practices of the fossil fuel industry constitute “unacceptable” harm, especially as the ACSRI weighs the question itself.

“They are currently discussing fossil fuels in an official capacity,” SJSF vice president Rachel Eckles told the FreeP on April 2. “So if this referendum results in a student opinion that yes, the school should divest, then it could really encourage the committee.”

But divestment is a matter for another editorial. Specifically, it was a matter for the FreeP’s Feb. 5 editorial, which criticized the trustees’ decision not to divest its holdings in firearms manufacturers, despite a recommendation from the ACSRI to do so. What that editorial neglected to touch on, though, was exactly how much the ACSRI mattered if the Executive Committee could elect to ignore it. The ACSRI, made up of three trustees, three students and three faculty members, professes in its mission statement to “represent a wide spectrum of the community” in its advice to the Board, and it does. But ultimately, the decision fell to the Board, and the Board decided.

That doesn’t bode well for a student referendum on a different target of divestment, especially a non-binding one. The question will determine the climate — so to speak — of student opinion on the issue, because that’s what it aimed to do, but what happens beyond that is ambiguous. SG has made no real indication as to when or how or in what form the results will be presented to the Board. Keep in mind, the Board had nothing to do with soliciting the referendum. It was a group of students, the SJSF, who brought it to SG, and it was SG who brought it to the ballot. However the trustees receive the results, it won’t be because they asked to receive them. Again, the decision falls to them, not SG or the SJSF.

The students’ wishes should matter more than that. Rather than make flaccid suggestions of the Board of Trustees, BU students deserve a seat at the table — student representation, with a voice that carries weight. Believe it or not, that’s not a radical suggestion: the University of Massachusetts Board of Trustees includes an elected student representative from each of the system’s five campuses, in addition to the 17 state-appointed trustees. Whatever the students say at UMass, at least they know they’re being heard.

A referendum gauging BU students’ own voice is not a bad start, but it’s not a satisfactory end. Education is not a sausage factory, and as those directly affected by decisions handed down by the trustees, the students should see how they’re made and have a hand in making them. Besides, if the Board is so concerned about making a political statement in refusing to divest, as it claimed after the firearms decision, it should be willing to consider democracy as a way to share the burden.