Student Groups Demand Divestment from Fossil Fuels

Student Groups Demand Divestment from Fossil Fuels

Sofia Tomasic Senior Staff Writer

Students for Energy Justice, Sunrise Movement, the Green Edge Fund, and a group of alumni have written a letter to the Board of Trustees requesting a pledge to divest Oberlin’s endowment from fossil fuels by 2025, the same year that Oberlin plans to achieve carbon neutrality on campus through the Sustainable Infrastructure Program. The letter, which will formally be sent next week, is an attempt to elicit a response to divestment requests, which have gone largely ignored by the board since 2014.

The letter requests that the board not only release a public statement pledging to divest, but also that they board post progress updates in January of 2024 and 2025, along with a plan to fully divest from fossil fuel holdings — including pooled investments — in any of the top 200 fossil fuel corporations by January 2025.

The push for fossil fuel divestment started in 2014, but at that point, the board rejected the student proposals for divestment and student leaders involved in the project graduated soon after. This past semester, alumni behind the 2014 proposals and others from the class of ’64 helped reestablish the movement with a new divestment committee that includes students from campus environmental organizations.

“It really is the alums who are taking a big role in this, but it’s been very, very collaborative,” College fourth-year and SEJ member RE Kukushkin said.

The letter points out Oberlin’s history of groundbreaking activism and leadership in environmental issues — such as its early commitment to carbon neutrality in 2006. The writers argue that the board’s response to this issue breaks with Oberlin tradition and goals. “We take pride in Oberlin’s accomplishments and vision, yet we believe the lack of a clear fossil fuel divestment policy and public statement of commitment is inconsistent with Oberlin’s leadership in sustainability,” the letter stated.

In response to these concerns from students and alumni, Board of Trustee Chair Chris Canavan explained that the College is already working to achieve these goals.

“The endowment’s exposure to fossil fuels is small and shrinking,” Canavan wrote in an email to the Review. “This is deliberate. We haven’t made any new investments connected to fossil fuels for some time, and we are letting go of legacy investments as fast as we feasibly can. Our legacy exposures are mostly tied up in investments that can’t easily be liquidated overnight.”

Despite these efforts, students have still voiced criticism about the lack of transparency as to how the endowment is invested. Earlier this fall, the Student Labor Action Coalition also demanded greater transparency from the board.

Kukushkin argued that the lack of financial transparency makes it challenging to assess the extent of Oberlin’s involvement in fossil fuel investments and the speed at which Oberlin is moving away from these kinds of investments. They hope the formal call to action initiated by the letter will encourage the board to open up more about how Oberlin is involved with the fossil fuel industry.

“Right now, we don’t really know where their money is going,” Kukushkin said. “While they may not be directly invested in fossil fuel companies, they may have their holdings in banks that have stakes in fossil fuel companies. It’s important that Oberlin really stick to its mission and ethics in that way.”

In their letter, members of campus environmental organizations and alumni also reference a United Nations report from April that warns that greenhouse emissions would need to peak by 2025 to limit warming thereafter to 1.5 degrees celsius. “Global warming exacts a universal yet profoundly unequal toll on humanity,” students and alumni wrote in their letter. “It is the young and the poor, particularly the poor of color, who first lose their futures, homes, and security. Divestment from fossil fuels means taking a moral stand for our planet, all living beings, and our future.”

Student Finance Committee to Return to Pre-COVID Funding Practices

Lauren Krainess News Editor

The Student Finance Committee was able to fund student organizations in excess through the 2021–22 academic year. SFC manages and distributes the student activity fund, and for the past two years had access to a surplus of funds in the absence of inperson events and organization activities. However, SFC has now spent this budget surplus and will return to distribution practices it utilized before the 2019–20 academic year.

To receive funding, student organizations must submit semester budgets to SFC, which undergo a review and approval process by student leaders on the committee. The Student Activity Fund is a pool of mandatory student activity fees collected from almost every College student each semester. For the 2021–22 academic year, each student paid a total of $556 in student activity fees.

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of the College’s large, SFC-funded events — such as Solarity and Drag Ball — did not occur during the 2019–20 and 2020–21 academic years. College third-year and SFC co-chair Leo Hidy explained that because SFC did not have to fund these events, the organization entered the 2021–22 academic year with an SAF surplus of over $500,000 and could fund student organizations more liberally than it had in the past.

“SFC is super happy to have seen all the amazing things student organizers have accomplished this year, and we are proud that each dollar from the SAF was put back into the hands of students,” Hidy wrote in an email to the Review.

However, SFC has now spent the entirety of this surplus. The size of the SAF for the 2022–23 academic year will likely be more consistent with the size of the SAF from the 2019–20 academic years. This means that some organizations will not receive as much funding as they did this past school year or all of the funding they requested for the fall 2022 semester.

“This past round of budget requests for [fall ’22] has seen a huge increase in the amount of funds requested,” Hidy wrote. “Unfortunately, we simply do not have enough in the SAF to fund the growth of all these organizations and also ensure that there are enough funds to support the creation of new organizations.”

According to Hidy, SFC seeks to distribute the SAF as equitably as possible, and all organizations large and small will likely face the effects of this change in funding practices.

“All organizations will see a difference in allocation from [2022 — when we had the surplus — to 2023 — when we won’t have the surplus],” Hidy wrote.

Within its funding for student organizations, SFC funds some equipment rentals for the Oberlin Musical Theater Association and student performers. According to OMTA co-chair and College third-year Olivia Bross, OMTA is not affiliated with the Theater Department and thus does not have access to the department’s supplies.

“As a co-chair of OMTA, I’ve been able to see firsthand how much we rely on the SFC for funding,” Bross wrote in an email to the Review. “Our last OMTA show, Chicago, was very successful, but this was only possible with funding from the SFC due to the lack of supplies from the theater department.”

Hidy expressed interest in potentially collaborating with academic departments such as the Theater Department to alleviate some of these concerns.

“We often get pretty expensive requests for equipment costs that academic departments already have access to like guitars, banjos, microphones, lighting, costumes, cameras, etcetera [sic],” Hidy wrote. “SFC would love to collaborate with academic departments to decrease the burden of equipment costs on the SAF, thus freeing up more funds for student organizations.”

Another group that SFC funds is Student Senate’s payroll. College third-year and SLAC treasurer Izzy Sanchez-Foster argues that this should not be funded through the SAF.

“Student Senate is an organization formed by the school to give students a spot at the administrative table,” Sanchez-Foster wrote in an email to the Review. “From this, it is abundantly clear that the Student Senate is a school-sponsored group and should therefore be funded by the college’s payroll office.”

Besides funding student organizations, the SAF also funds the College Lanes, The ’Sco, Cat in the Cream, and some Residential Education expenditures. When asked why the SAF funds the functioning of some facilities that seem to fall outside the category of student activities, Associate Dean of Students Thom Julian clarified that the SAF is meant to not only fund student organizations but also to generally improve student life on campus.

“The Student Finance Committee allocates money to support student organizations and improve campus life,” Julian wrote in an email to the Review. “To reach this mission, they fund specific programming initiatives on campus that are not official student organizations.”

Hidy clarified that although SFC will have a relatively smaller SAF to manage in the 2022–23 school year, SFC has reserves and is not in a budget deficit.

Co-ops Navigate COVID-19 Cases

Ella Moxley News Editor

COVID-19 cases have increased on campus over the last week. Between May 13–19, Oberlin recorded 63 positive COVID cases. As a result, co-ops in the Oberlin Student Cooperative Association have worked to adapt to the increased number of sick students.

Earlier this week, Pyle Inn sent out an emergency request to other co-ops asking for assistance covering the shifts of co-op members with COVID. The co-op has also moved exclusively to grab-and-go to reduce further exposure among the membership.

While there is no precedent for such a request in recent OSCA memory, it was urgent to fill the open shifts because there was a possibility that the co-op would have to cancel over six meals a week, which would create an accessibility concern.

“With the large number of empty spots on our work chart, our regular practice of asking for people to fill in for individual shifts became too chaotic and unmanageable,” College firstyear and Pyle Dining Loose Ends Coordinator Susanne Goldstein wrote in an email to the Review. “However, most of the other co-ops are also thinly spread with their own shifts, so we relied mainly on our own membership. ... Thanks to how much everyone stepped up, we haven’t had to cancel any meals this week, which has been really great.”

Like Pyle, Harkness House co-op is also grappling with a large number of sick members. In response to the shortage, College first-year and Head Cook Abigail Nordan made a chart to organize the substitute requests in their co-op.

“There’s always times when people are sick and there’s kind of an influx in a need for subs and coverage and stuff like that,” Nordan said. “The reason I made that chart is just because I was having a hard time keeping track of what had been covered and what hadn’t.”

Lauren Krainess News Editor

College fourth-year Ella Fahl Moxley has been involved with the Review since her first semester at Oberlin and has worked as a News Editor for six semesters. She has contributed to notable coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, racism in STEM, and community news. When she is not editing the News section, she can be found going on runs and avoiding bird attacks, talking to her track star boyfriend Ansel, or doing homework behind the Science Library desk. Next year she plans to move in with her partner, Gigi, in D.C.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Why did you start working for the Review?

I was feeling a little bit lost my first year, and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my free time or how to find my sense of community. I was talking to my advisor at the time — Jan Cooper, the Review’s sponsor — and she was like, “Oh, you should write for the Review. You can do it for credit, and you already know the person you’ll be working with, Anisa.” Anisa was one of my very first friends at Oberlin because she was in my PAL group and first-year seminar. So I started writing, and while there were definitely some messy times in the first year, Anisa was always so supportive and I’ll never forget having her as my first editor. I trusted her so much, and she really brought me into the Review and taught me everything I knew.

What have been the most important stories in your time as News Editor?

I’m honestly really proud of the work that the Review and the News section have done to cover COVID-19. I think the Review is in such a unique position to be aware of what’s going on on campus, sometimes even before people in the administration are. For example, in December, the Review became aware pretty early on that there was an outbreak on campus, and we brought that to the attention of the administration. I’m really proud that the Review has such a strong connection to campus that we are aware of stories before they even manifest.

Besides COVID, we did some really important work last spring about racism in the STEM departments on campus. I think that was just a starting point for future work, but that was a really important story to report, a story to be heard and told.

You’ve kind of already touched on this, but what accomplishments during your time at the Review are you most proud of?

When I became a news editor, two of my main goals were to increase community news coverage and to increase mentorship at the Review. I feel really proud of the way those goals have manifested. Several weeks ago, we published a paper with only community news in the News section, and I feel like that is a really direct manifestation of the goals I set out to accomplish alongside Gigi, Anisa, and Kar, who also feel really strongly about those issues. I think there are definitely other goals to accomplish and things we could do better, but I think we’ve come a long way in the past couple of years.

I’m so proud of where the News section stands today. When I first started writing for the Review, I was the only senior staff writer, but now we have a team of three editors, two senior staff writers, and our layout editor. We’re a really cohesive group of six people with a lot of guest stars who come in regularly and work with us. I can’t take credit for all the people who are doing great work, but it’s been really great to see people who came in their first year with no experience with journalism who are now thriving, being so creative, and working so hard to make something that’s really beautiful and exciting. I’m really excited that I was part of making that happen.

What has been your favorite memory during your time with the Review?

It’s hard because a lot of my memories of my time at the Review were working remotely, as three of my six semesters as news editor were remote. A lot of my memories are not physically at the Review. I really cherish the time that I have been able to spend in the office.

I look back fondly on the first story I ever wrote. I reported on a protest, and I didn’t really know what I was doing. I didn’t know that I was supposed to record people talking. When I got there, I was going up to people and asking them for quotes, and I was trying to write down what they were saying so quickly. My notes just look crazy from those interviews because I was so stressed! I was like, “I guess I’ll take a picture of the protest.” And I think I edited the picture too, because I thought I knew what I was doing. It didn’t look good, and I made all the red accents really bright and it’s really ugly.

Then I went out of town that weekend for a Model UN conference, and as I was sitting in this really boring conference room, my friends texted me a picture of the front page of the Review, and it had my article and the picture I’d taken on the front page. And I was like, “Oh no.” But it felt really good, too. It was such a silly story, but for the first time I had worked so hard on something, and then to see it up there on the front page — even though it was a slow news week — felt really good.

This isn’t very specific, but one of my favorite memories of the Review was last year during COVID when we weren’t printing and weren’t allowed to be in our office. So we worked in Wilder Hall, which was super weird. Thursday nights, Gigi and I had this tradition where halfway through production, we would take a break to go downstairs to DeCafé. They had a special where you could get a cookie and milk for a meal swipe, so that was the thing we always did — our treat for getting through Thursday night. I got really close to Gigi, spending time with her doing that. Working with Gigi has been one of my favorite parts of being on the Review. We grew from baby writers to really confident editors together, and I am so grateful that we were able to do that together and that I could learn from her. So that is a happy memory that stands out.

Ella Fahl Moxley

Photo by Kenji Anderson

Looking back on your time at the Review, what advice would you give your first-year self?

I think just to be a little bit more assertive. It took me a really long time to push myself into trying new things, whether that was journalistically or just going to the office or asking for help. Once I started doing those things, I grew so much as a journalist and met these people who are really special and amazing and important to me, so I wish I had done that sooner.

What do you think you will take away from your time working at the Review and carry with you into your postOberlin life?

I think probably just a lot of community. I feel like everyone knows that Gigi and I are really close. I’m also really grateful that I got a chance to work with Kush, who was an amazing co-editor and friend, and so many other people that I could mention. The number-one skill I’ve learned is just staying cool in a crisis. I think there’s always a crisis at Oberlin and the Review. There’s always the story that drops last-minute, or the person who suddenly doesn’t want to talk to the Review anymore, or a COVID outbreak. Sometimes, everyone on senior staff gets sick or you walk in on Friday morning to learn that the lawyer said you can’t run your front-page story and you have to redo the entire layout before noon. I think those things used to freak me out, and now they do so a lot less.

City Council Censures Ray English, Welcomes New Member

Juliana Gaspar Senior Staff Writer

At last Monday’s City Council meeting, Councilmember Ray English read a statement in response to his recent censuring. The censure, the first time City Council has taken this action in 15 years, was a response to an alleged breach in confidentiality during an email exchange between English and Jon Clark, the city’s law director. Seperate from the censure, the City Council appointed Michael McFarlin as the newest member of Council on Monday to replace Heather Adelman, former councilmember and president, who resigned from her position to join Oberlin College as a sustainability manager.

“The point of the [email] exchange was to point out something that Mr. Clark had done wrong,” said Bryan Burgess, president of the City Council. “Rather than handling that discreetly, Mr. English copied councilmembers and other City staff. Ultimately in the exchange, he reprimanded Mr. Clark for something that had been mentioned in the Council’s executive session just a few nights before.”

Three categories of meetings fall under Oberlin City Council’s executive sessions: employees, litigation, and real estate. The Council believes that English’s emails betrayed the confidentiality of an executive meeting where the Council discussed an annual evaluation of Clark. Although there are no ramifications to censuring and it is largely symbolic, English defended his perspective in his statement to the Council last Monday.

“I want to say first that I made a mistake,” English said in his statement. “The mistake involved not thinking carefully about an email message that I was about to write and its potential consequences. [This is] a classic case of cascading misunderstandings that result from a poorly communicated email.”

English cast the sole vote against the censuring. All other Council members agreed that English had broken confidentiality regarding an executive meeting held April 11. Although he admitted to his mistake and committed to not making the same error in the future, he also addressed what he believed to be incorrect or unfair in the Council’s decision to censure him. English also pointed to a lack of clarity in policy about how and when councilmembers can speak or share information.

“I believe there is ample evidence indicating that the City Council process leading to the censure resolution was unfair and that the censure resolution itself contained statements that were simply false or that pertained matters where Council policy is unclear,” English said in his statement.

According to Burgess, the situation has been resolved, but if the Council decides it necessary, it can take further steps. In his concluding statement for the resolution of the censure, which took place May 16, English questioned if the Council violated the open meetings law by making decisions in closed discussion that excluded him. He also asked whether or not the Council president exceeded the authority that the position has under Oberlin’s charter.

“I have indicated that I believe any further action on this matter — including the possibility of rescinding the resolution — is up to the five members of Council who voted for it,” English said. “That question is beyond my control. I will remain focused on moving forward in a cooperative way to address the challenges facing our city.”

The Council looks to move forward from this situation, as the Tuesday meeting was the last in relation to this censure. Burgess believes that this situation stresses the Council’s expectations for confidentiality in executive sessions.

“The Council speaks as one voice,” Burgess said. “So in an open public meeting, everyone speaks their mind. They represent different constituencies, that’s fully expected, but for the three areas — employees, litigation, and real estate — we speak as one. It would be inappropriate for any one member to voice their opinion.”

Both English and the Council will continue their duties while welcoming a new member, McFarlin. Adelman’s departure left a space open for a new president as well as a new member. Bryan Burgess was elected as president, and McFarlin will take Adelman’s open seat.

“I’m really looking forward to [McFarlin joining the Council],” Burgess said. “He has a lot of experience in the city. He’s been the chairman of the historic preservation commission, and he worked on the city’s comprehensive plan. I expect that he’ll be able to step into the role and get up to speed pretty quickly.”

McFarlin is as optimistic as Burgess regarding his new position on the Council. He is confident that he will be able to catch up quickly due to his experience on other boards and committees.

“I’m looking forward to working with the other members and hearing from the public about what the issues are,” McFarlin said. “There’s always a touch of anxiety going into a new organization, especially something like this … but I feel comfortable with the procedure. … I’m certainly honored to be chosen, — all my thanks to the other councilmembers — and I’m ready to get started.”