After years of pushing universities to dismiss fossil fuels, students' activists are trying a new strategy: presenting legal complaints against institutions under a law that requires universities to invest in a way that reflects its mission of charity.
The Law on Prudent Management of Institutional Funds encourages non-profit institutions to consider their social mission when investing. That means that, as each legal complaint indicates, that nonprofit schools have "a fiduciary duty to invest with consideration by the charitable purposes of the university, a duty that distinguishes non-profit institutions of other investors."
helped by pro bonus lawyers for nonprofit climate defense project, students at the Massachusetts and Princeton Institute, Stanford, Vanderbilt and Yale Universities presented legal complaints last week with lawyers General State, arguing that investments in fossil fuels run in the prudent management of each state. Institutional Fund Law.
Most popular
" with each prosecutor General, in these respective States, we have written an individual Specific Gal complaint that states that the fossil fuel investments of our school are carried out contrary to their charitable purposes such as educational purposes exempt taxes in accordance with the UPMIFA, "said Molly Weiner, a first-year student in Yale and organize with the Yale Equipment Justice Coalition.
Each university, the note of the students, has hundreds of millions of dollars of envelope funds inverted in fossil fuels. That means that the booming skills are directly related to the causes of climate change, they say. Student organizers are opposed to the rich that become richer at the expense of the planet and future generations.
The legal strategy
If students can not convince administrators to deserve for the good of morality, they hope to force them to do so on legal grounds. They point out fossil fuel divestments at Cornell University and Harvard University, who see how victories, after similar legal complaints were made. googleg.cmd.push (function () googleg.display ("dfp-ad-article_in_article");););
"The strategy is to shine a light about how seriously these endowments should be taken from massive universities," "Peter Scott, a junior at MIT and organizer with MIT Vinfest wrote in an email." When investing in fossil fuels , and by repeatedly dismissed the calls to deviate from the destructive industries, such as the fossil fuel industry, MIT and other unintended universities, are providing credibility to these industries, essentially supporting them as socially responsible. MIT administrators love to say that divestment would be a "political" decision, but when universities around us are making the decision to fire, inaction is, no doubt, politically. By arguing that fossil fuels investments have legal implications, it will be much more difficult for administrators to pretend to be socially responsible investments that belong to a portfolio that states to have standards. "
Some organizers have that universities have Ignored the voices of the students who urge divestment, without leaving the option, but forcing a legal confrontation.
"The complaints demand that our schools seriously reconsider their investment strategies and their complicity in the climate crisis. ", Hannah Reynolds, a senior in Princeton and organizer with Vigest Princeton, wrote in an email." The added external pressure of the legal ramifications of inaction is the next logical step after Princeton and others have not been responding for our activism in the ground. In Cornell and Harvard, divestment occurred mere months after the complaints were presented. "
S
Rate and Comment
