In the late 1970s, Oberlin College students organized a divestment campaign. The College had adopted a policy stating that it would not invest in companies that had 10 percent or more of their worldwide sales in South Africa or in companies that did not comply with the Sullivan Principles. Students felt this policy was far too lenient. They first raised their concerns about the College’s investment policies in an open forum with the Board of Trustees in 1978, demanding full divestment from companies with any presence in South Africa. On April 6, 1979, students gathered at Mudd Center to protest during another board meeting. The College charged 105 students with “disrupting the essential operations of the College,” which would have resulted in expulsion, but later let the students off with a reprimand. Student actions continued until Oberlin’s decision to divest in 1987, including a three-day sit-in by hundreds of students — up to 250 at its busiest — at the Cox Administration Building, which finally spurred the Board to action. The Board’s decision to divest took nearly 10 years.
In 2015, the board denied an application for divestment from a number of companies that benefit from Israel’s occupation of Palestine that had been put forth by Students for a Free Palestine as part of a campaign begun in 2013. In an email to SFP members, the board stated that it felt divestment would “not be acceptable to the larger Oberlin community” and that it had “elicited strong opposition.” The board provided neither further explanation nor evidence to back this assertion. This was despite the fact that the application had been co-sponsored by 33 other organizations on campus after the Student Senate passed a divestment resolution in 2013. One of the three criteria the Oberlin Board of Trustees looks at when considering divestment policy is that “the proposed divestment (or decision not to divest) will be generally understood by and acceptable to the greater Oberlin community, based on the board’s best understanding of the community’s opinion.” The Board of Trustees’ metric for assessing what is and isn’t acceptable to the Oberlin community is opaque and not aligned with what we feel to be the consensus of our campus community. It claims to measure public opinion without accounting for the opinions of actual students and groups at the school.
Today, we continue to push Oberlin College to divest from Israel.
Student divestment campaigns have a long history. They represent one of the most direct ways students can use their positionality as economic stakeholders in their institutions to influence change. Just as they did in the global struggle against South African apartheid, calls for divestment have played a key role in the movement for Palestinian liberation. The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement is an international Palestinian led campaign launched in 2005 aimed at putting nonviolent, economic pressure on Israel until it adheres to international law recognizing the rights and territories of Palestinians. Our call for divestment is not local to Oberlin College. We are a small piece of a global network of students and activists demanding that their institutions divest from Israel. Oberlin College’s solidarity is overdue.
The school’s website asserts: “In accordance with Oberlin’s history of action in response to ‘instances of human sufferingnatural calamity, and injustice.The board will consider proposals for divestment from entities that contribute to activities that ‘shock the conscience.’” The Board of Trustees showed its willingness to take a moral stand with its divestment from fossil fuels, further highlighting its unacceptable decision to reject condemnation of the Israeli occupation. Surely tens of thousands of Palestinians killed, many of them children, and 1.7 million displaced, shocks the conscience.
Under the current divestment policy, Oberlin’s decisions remain in the hands of 29–37 trustees who have no obligation to operate according to true community sentiment. If these trustees can reject a proposal that has the support of 33 campus organizations on the grounds that it is not “acceptable to the larger Oberlin community,” it is time to interrogate how they define that community. As long as Oberlin’s divestment policy allows the Board to determine with no accountability what constitutes community acceptance, then students are effectively silenced, their values ignored and dishonored. Oberlin has a choice when it comes to its investments. The ethics of this choice must be paramount in times of great moral and political upheaval. Money talks, and the Board of Trustees’ failure to withdraw monetary support that benefits the Israeli Occupation Force’s genocide of the Palestinian people speaks volumes.
It took 10 years of consistent student activism before Oberlin College divested fully from South African apartheid. It has now been 10 years since the 2013 Student Senate vote in favor of divestment from Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Oberlin’s only justifiable choice is divestment now. We demand financial transparency and student oversight of the College’s investments. We demand divestment from the IOF.
