The University of Maine won a victory last January when their campus divested from coal.
UMaine students organized to get a wide base of support– from students to alumni to faculty and community members– to achieve divestment.
On Monday afternoon, January 26th, 2015– the University of Maine System Board of Trustees unanimously approved a measure to divest all direct holdings from coal companies. The historic vote followed a two-year campaign led by students at the University of Southern Maine and University of Maine campuses. The move makes the University of Maine System the first public land grant institution and the first University System in the country to divest any fossil fuel holdings.
How did we get to this victory? The following is a list of advice based off our campaign:
1.) Keep it personal.
I’m sure you’ve all heard this before, but it’s important. We need to remind ourselves that while we’re students and organizers we’re people too. There are many aspects of our lives that motivate us to work for fossil fuel divestment. When you bring forward your story it encourages ours. For example, our Trustee Marjorie Medd spoke of her father’s health issues after working in the coal industry, which she said inspired her to pursue higher education. “We have to take this to a personal level,” she said.
For me, it’s the town I’ve grown up in and live in: South Portland, Maine. Oil holding tanks were always in the backdrop from elementary to high school. And within the past two years my town has held ground against a proposal to export tar sands oil through the Portland-Montreal pipeline. Working on that campaign I watched the power of the people, even today, when we face a lawsuit from Exxon Mobil. And while my town is safe for now, there are already communities suffering from tar sands oil in Alberta, Canada, in Kalamazoo, in Mayflower, and stretched along the Key XL Pipeline. The fossil fuel industry has political and financial power, as I’ve so explicitly seen in South Portland’s local campaign. For me, fossil fuel divestment is the best way to dismantle this power and to restore what we do value in higher education.
2.) Connect our history with our future.
Looking at the past, we can find inspiration and support.The University System made history in the 1980s when it became one of the first University institutions in the country to divest from Apartheid South Africa. When our Trustees worried that coal divestment would create an unwanted precedent, we reminded them that precedent was set with Apartheid South Africa. Aligning ethics with fiduciary responsibility has been a part of past, and our future. Trustee Bonnie Newsome also expressed a desire to move toward full fossil fuel divestment. “I would like to see our investment committee continue to consider divestment from fossil fuels more generally,” said Trustee Newsome, after pointing out the many ecological thresholds that we are currently crossing.
And it’s a good reminder that, “Coal is the energy of the past. As world governments place stricter limits on carbon emissions, as they must if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change, coal reserves will lose their value. Divesting now protects our assets, and sends the message that we take climate change seriously,” said Divest UMaine student-organizer, Catherine Fletcher. “We are ecstatic that the Board of Trustees made the right decision today, and once again put us on the right side of history,” said Fletcher.
3.) Gather community support.
Within our core organizing team we have Alumni and faculty folks. It’s important to have a wide base of support, especially when our system universities are far apart. Early on in our campaign we gained both student and faculty senate approval to our divestment resolution at the University of Southern Maine and are currently working on this at the UMaine campus. Our divestment campaign is linked into a network of Maine schools through the student-led coalition, Maine Students for Climate Justice. Having this network of support across the state has helped increased the crowd at rallies and meetings, during social blitz, and reassurance.
In our campaign we make it personal, and try to use our position of privilege to address the racist and classist systems upheld by the fossil fuel industry. Students have argued that fossil fuel divestment is a necessary move for the system, both morally and financially. Meaghan LaSala is a member of Divest UMaine. “It is our responsibility to align our investments with industries that are compatible with justice for communities that have borne the brunt of the toxic and exploitative practices of the fossil fuel industry— disproportionately low income communities and communities of color,” she said.
Much gratitude and solidarity,
Iris SanGiovanni & the Divest UMaine Team
