Students 'STAND' up to UD's divestment policy

Ongoing attempts to bring a plan of Sudan divestment to the university have been met with resistance, according to STAND, the student anti-genocide coalition on campus.

Sudan divestment is a global effort which takes invested funds out of foreign companies working with the Sudanese government in an attempt to drain the money being used for the Darfur genocide at its sources. With divestment already being utilized by 59 universities, 23 states and 16 cities, STAND members are asking why the university has not yet followed suit.

Max Croes, advocacy associate of the Sudan Divestment Task Force, an organization that supports targeted divestment plans throughout the United States and Europe, said the point behind divestment is to pressure the Sudanese government to end the genocide in Darfur.

"The number one way that we do that is through economic ties," Croes said.

He said the Sudanese government itself is a global anomaly, in that it has a debt which exceeds its Gross Domestic Product.

Croes said that because Sudan is incapable of producing domestic capital, it is almost solely reliant on foreign companies to provide it with funds in exchange for the use of their natural resources. Out of the money gained from foreign investments, he said approximately 70 percent goes to military expenditures being used in Darfur, a southern region of Sudan.

"The answer to breaking those economic ties is placing pressure on those companies and having them change their policies towards the Sudanese government and the genocide in Darfur, because of course without those corporations the Sudanese government does not have a leg to stand on," Croes said.

According to the Sudan Divestment Task Force Web site, in December 2007 President George W. Bush signed the Sudan Accountability and Divestment Act into law, adding the United States to the list of 18 countries that have initiated targeted Sudan divestment campaigns.

Hilary Jampel, president of STAND, said efforts by the group to propose a plan of divestment to the university began one year ago.

"We decided last Spring Semester to start a divestment campaign," Jampel said. "We didn't know 100 percent what divestment was, but it was becoming popular. Once we started working with the state it then turned into 'All of these universities have divested, why haven't we?' "

Jennifer Hano, STAND divestment chair, said soon after the decision to bring a plan of divestment to the university, she began contacting university administrators.

"It didn't look like we were getting anywhere," Hano said.

After numerous e-mail messages sent back and forth to the university's chief investment officer, Mark Stalnecker, Hano said she felt discouraged.

"It was frustrating because it looked as if they didn't care about an issue that was very important to a lot of their students," she said.

Hano said she was told it was not in the university's interest to disclose financial information with students. After numerous failed attempts at setting up a meeting, Hano said she spoke with Stalnecker outside of his office.

"It eventually led up to me personally handing him the paper with the black-listed companies, and him pretty much dismissing it," she said.

At press time, Stalnecker was unavailable to be reached for comment due to an out-of-town business trip.

Journalism professor McKay Jenkins said the use of divestment plans to try to combat genocide did not originate with efforts against Sudan.

"In South Africa, divestment worked," Jenkins said. "When I was in college, students all over the country pushed their schools to divest from companies doing business with the apartheid government in South Africa, and it helped push that country to historical changes."

He said divestment seems like an easy and important moral decision with measurable impact on the university's public image.

"No university wants to be seen as investing in regimes responsible for genocide," Jenkins said.

Executive Vice President and Treasurer, Scott Douglass said the university's current stance on Sudan divestment is one of "non-involvement."

"The issue is, 'does disinvestment have an impact?' " Douglass said. "There are so many investors. If Delaware decided not to buy from companies that have direct investment [in Sudan] somebody else would. It's not a very effective way to have that kind of impact."

In addition to claiming divestment was not effective in South Africa, he said that because the university's endowment is not directly invested in any companies but rather under the control of an investment manager, the university is incapable of choosing where funds are invested.

"The only way we can disinvest is if we have control over the individual stock," Douglass said. "Our whole investment strategy is we have no control over individual stocks. We have managers that are intermediaries for us. They're picking a portfolio and they don't ask us permission. We don't get to say we want this or more of that."

Political science Professor Kenneth Campbell, a member of the International Association of Genocide Scholars and author of "Genocide and the Global Village," said he supports divestment and believes people may be misinformed of the purpose of divestment tactics.

"They may very well be thinking in very narrow economic terms," Campbell said.

He said while divesting alone may not be a purely effective means of forcing the Sudanese government to change its practices, when placed in a larger strategy composed of numerous tactics an accumulating effect will hopefully occur.

"I can't see how it could hurt, it can only help," Campbell said. "I think it's a lame excuse to claim that it doesn't work. You can't know that it won't work until you try it. Only if you don't try it can you be sure it doesn't work."