Board of Trustees Releases Statement Prohibiting Divestment

On the morning of February 24, the “Statement of Investment Principles of the Connecticut College Board of Trustees” was released to the campus community. Within the statement, the Board clarified that in order for them to best support the mission and future of the College, “it is the Board’s position that the College’s endowment is not a vehicle for expressing views on world affairs or any particular issue,” and that “the Board will maintain a policy of insulating the endowment from any political or social debate and keep its attention on the pursuit of long-term performance goals.” This comes as a policy shift for the College, which has historically cooperated with and, in the example of divestment from South African apartheid, voted to approve student-led divestment movements.

This statement is the culmination of, for CC Students in Solidarity With Palestine (CCS4P), over a year of conversations about the College’s possible divestment from military weapons manufacturing companies amidst ongoing violence in the Gaza Strip. The Board’s new policy both denies their demands for divestment and preemptively prohibits future student movements from achieving divestment and utilizing the College’s endowment to “endorse or reject any particular point of view.”

Various student organizations involved with the vote noted the confusion surrounding contradictory information available on the nature of the statement prior to its publication. Members of CCS4P were reportedly led to believe that the vote in February would be a decision directly on their request for military weapons divestment and were only informed in the week before the vote that the Board of Trustees drafted a statement, on which the students could not receive any information. Contrastingly, it was communicated to some Student Government Association (SGA) members that the vote would specifically regard the College’s investment transparency, and CCS4P’s other demand that the College’s investment guidelines be made public to students. 

In the week leading up to the vote, the Board of Trustees, individually and collectively, met with several student organizations. They communicated with the chair of the Board of Trustees, Seth Alvord ‘93, and Dean of Students Victor Arcelus their recent statement in support of divestment and recommitted their demands ahead of the vote. Over the weekend, the Muslim Students Association expressed their support for divestment to the Board during a meeting on funding, and students from Hillel secured a last-minute audience with the Board during which they expressed frustration with not having received an invitation to speak, particularly last October when CCS4P had their second meeting with the Board to discuss divestment, sparking controversy regarding why Hillel had not been present in previous conversations.

Initial campus responses expressed concern and displeasure with the statement. Top posts from students on YikYak, the anonymous social media app, mocked the statement and trustees, and encouraged another Fanning occupation. Additionally, CCS4P released a short statement on Instagram denouncing the Board’s statement and expressing their belief that it was “an infringement on the rights of all students,” a violation of shared governance, and “not a ‘neutral’ decision.”