2008 Woodie Awards
We still want divestment NOW
Barbara Macholz '08 and Jacy Good '08
Issue date: 11/15/07 Section: Op/Ed
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The amount of money invested in Sudan by the college right now is listed in the previous article as being "one quarter of one percent of the endowment fund." In the context of the last article we believe this statistic was named in order to suggest that we don't have very much money involved in Sudan, so why do we need to rush into divesting it? It's not as though we are really supporting anything with our small investments, right? And yet, if the investments are so small, why is it so hard to rearrange them? If we are only investing .25%, surely that does not seem like a number that would make our endowment fund crash and burn if we were to suddenly remove it. Further more, try again to compare the pain and emotional issues that would arise from a problem with our endowment fund to the slitting of throats in a mosque and the raping of women in refugee camps. Now say the decision to divest and to try to keep another five-year-old boy from being shot in the back is difficult.
We understand that the overall process might be slow, painful, and complex, and in a situation without genocide that might be acceptable. But the longer we take, the more money we put toward ethnic cleansing. In our Muhlenberg College Statement on Diversity it is written that the college has a "commitment to principles of justice, equality and democracy." Let's start to actually live up to the statements that we make and stop just writing that we believe in justice but acting like we care more about money than the justice the people in Darfur deserve. Right now, instead of fulfilling our Statement on Diversity, we are fulfilling our Statement on Genocide - we don't really support it, but we're going to give a little bit of money to it anyway. That's okay for now, right? Wrong.
With the recent showing of Hotel Rwanda on campus and the well-attended lecture by Stephanie Nyombayire (a survivor of the genocide in Rwanda) it is clear that the campus community is concerned with genocide. However, the student body doesn't make decisions about the endowment fund. It seems that in a logical setting, if the campus community is concerned about genocide, and divestment is a strong strategy against genocide, then the Board, the people who have the students' interests at hand, would want to support divestment. And yet, there is still a sound barrier between the campus community and the Board's lack of decision. We as a Student Body need to make our voices heard more loudly.
This article is just a start. But its not just that we need to speak louder, we also need to be listened to. Listen, hear our voices: we want divestment and we want it now.
Barbara Macholz '08 and Jacy Good '08
We understand that the overall process might be slow, painful, and complex, and in a situation without genocide that might be acceptable. But the longer we take, the more money we put toward ethnic cleansing. In our Muhlenberg College Statement on Diversity it is written that the college has a "commitment to principles of justice, equality and democracy." Let's start to actually live up to the statements that we make and stop just writing that we believe in justice but acting like we care more about money than the justice the people in Darfur deserve. Right now, instead of fulfilling our Statement on Diversity, we are fulfilling our Statement on Genocide - we don't really support it, but we're going to give a little bit of money to it anyway. That's okay for now, right? Wrong.
With the recent showing of Hotel Rwanda on campus and the well-attended lecture by Stephanie Nyombayire (a survivor of the genocide in Rwanda) it is clear that the campus community is concerned with genocide. However, the student body doesn't make decisions about the endowment fund. It seems that in a logical setting, if the campus community is concerned about genocide, and divestment is a strong strategy against genocide, then the Board, the people who have the students' interests at hand, would want to support divestment. And yet, there is still a sound barrier between the campus community and the Board's lack of decision. We as a Student Body need to make our voices heard more loudly.
This article is just a start. But its not just that we need to speak louder, we also need to be listened to. Listen, hear our voices: we want divestment and we want it now.
Barbara Macholz '08 and Jacy Good '08