This blog post was written by Sierra Dickey, one of the seniors in Divest Whitman. To learn more and to support Divest Whitman’s campaign, please visit and like Divest Whitman’s facebook page and follow them on twitter!
Divest Whitman is ready to get Whitman College to commit to divorcing from the fossil fuel industry.
Global Divestment Action (GDA) at Whitman circulated around the following installations: a nest of logos on the tennis court, a projector on repeat in the student gallery, and a mock-oil spill on the stairs of the student center.
While we, like many, wanted to use GDA as a chance to celebrate the global status of our movement, we also had to keep it local. While the projector looped and re-looped videos of divestment actions from around the world, the signage above the mock oil spill read: DUE TO INTENSE PRESSURE FROM FACULTY AND STUDENTS THE ENDOWMENT HAS SPRUNG A LEAK. The spill demonstrated that our campus is actually dirty even if by appearances otherwise impeccably green. Our campaign is ready to clean up the endowment, and in so doing eschew an industry and a resource whose existence depends upon the economic subjugation and pollution of specific communities.
The nest of logos pinned to the tennis court fence showed that many of our peer schools have already gotten clean. Pitzer, The New School, Unity, Prescott– these names and more were there to remind the campus that divestment works. All in all, GDA came to be about one phrase: “ask not what divestment can do for your endowment, ask what your endowment can do for the divestment movement”. And so we carry forth with a few more kickass installations under our belts, a student referendum in the works, and a shiny new catchphrase jumping off our tongues.
Divest Whitman uses creative art mediums as a primary way to draw attention to divestment on the Whitman College campus.
