Responsible Investment Asks For UC Support

Activists from the student group Responsible Investment at Harvard solicited Undergraduate Council support for its new initiative for Harvard to adopt a “set of principles of ownership” for companies that Harvard wholly owns at the UC’s general meeting Sunday night.

“The UC played a huge role in helping us win our first campaign last year,” activist Samuel F. Wohns ’14 said. “We’re here because that was always part of a much larger goal of ours to push Harvard to become a more socially and environmentally responsible, transparent, and accountable investor.”

The new campaign, called the Responsible Ownership Campaign, focuses on companies that Harvard entirely owns through its investment.

“Since Harvard owns them outright, Harvard can play a stronger role in making sure that they’re not only positive for our endowment growth, but also positive for the local community they’re operating in,” said Gabriel H. Bayard ’15, another member of Responsible Investment.

Bayard mentioned two examples of alleged mismanagement in Harvard-owned firms, one involving the alleged deterioration of wetlands by two timber plantations in Argentina and another involving the unionization of workers at the DoubleTree Hotel in Boston. All three companies are wholly owned by the University.

The representatives from the Responsible Investment group said that the UC could help in reaching out to the student body on these issues.

The Council has supported the efforts of Responsible Investment in the past, first when it endorsed the Fair Harvard Fund last spring. Additionally, it adopted the position of advocating for the University to create a social choice fund last fall after a strong majority of students who voted in a referendum question indicated support for this position.

UC representatives also unanimously approved eight different pieces of legislation at Sunday’s general meeting. Most notably, the Council approved an amendment to its constitution that overhauls the mission statements of all six committees that make up the Council.

The mission statement changes, which stemmed from discussions held at last Friday’s Rules Committee meeting, are part of a larger internal effort in the Council to modernize its rules. Last week, the Council voted to make structural changes to committees through changes to its Bylaws.

In addition, the Council voted in favor of setting aside $5,000 from its grants budget for a Freshman Life Fund in an effort to encourage programming events for the freshman class.

The creation of a fund supporting freshman programming remained in limbo earlier in the semester because of the lack of “roll-over funding” from UC funds unused from last year. According to UC President Tara Raghuveer ’14, a deal with the Office of Student Life, in which it would provide half of the $20,000 of funding for Wintersession grants, freed up money in the grants fund to provide money for the Freshman Life Fund.