SGA passes bill calling on NU to sever ties with private military companies

After hours of intense debate, a resolution that would push Northeastern administration to halt the university’s collaboration with private military companies — including terminating research contracts, financial holdings and campus recruiting events — passed in the Student Government Association, or SGA, March 13.

SR-SP-23-104, written by members of the Progressive Student Alliance, or PSA, claims companies that manufacture military technology

‘Ask directly profit from war and produce weapons that have been used to commit war crimes. The legislation specifically focused on Raytheon Technologies, one of the largest aerospace and defense conglomerates in the world, a longtime donor to Northeastern with an amphitheater in its name on campus.

“Northeastern claims to have social responsibility. It claims to care about social justice,” said Kyler Shinkle-Stolar, a fourth-year biology major and the main author of the legislation. “It shouldn’t be supporting industries that are causing so much harm.”

Northeastern has not made its endowments and tax documents public, making it difficult to know the extent of their work with Raytheon and similar companies. Top executives from General Electric, Exxonmobil and Raytheon have served on Northeastern’s executive board in the past, creating what Shinkle-Stolar called a “conflict of interest.”

Human Rights Watch called for an end to U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia after they linked a bomb made by Raytheon to an attack on a worker’s shelter in Yemen in 2016, which was the 23rd time they linked U.S. supplied weapons to unlawful attacks in the war and the fourth time these weapons were produced by Raytheon.

“These companies profit so much [from war], make billions and billions of dollars and then end up investing that money and just creating more weapons,” Shinkle-Stolar said. “When there’s a question of whether we should send weapons to a country, they lobby for weapons to be sent.”

According to a study by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, the Department of Defense increased its military budget after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the Twin Towers by more than the entire military budget of any other country, topping $4.4 trillion for projects that primarily benefit corporate contractors. The main benefactors of this spending surge have been five major corporations Northeastern has worked with in the past, including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman. While military spending has come down since 2010, it remains historically high.