Meeting with Master and JCR President

The SRI rep, yours truly, and the college president had a meeting with the master to discuss our college's investments. The meeting went quite well although nothing concrete has yet been agreed on. The master's main points were:

*The college has a legal duty to maximise its income.

*As a policy, the college has no direct investments in tobacco companies. In the past it did not invest in South Africa. That seems to be the extent of it at the moment

*The idea of shareholder action appealed to him, and he preferred it to screening of certain companies. He was worried that such a practice would limit our investments and simplify complex issues too much.

*We have c£10 million invested in stocks and shares. This is managed by Chiswell associates who specialise in organisations like ours. The college finds out every quarter how its investments are doing.

*He was pleased that we had brought up the issue and hoped that the students and governing body could work together to clarify the college's investment policy. He wanted to avoid confrontation between the JCR and SCR. Whilst accepting that I had legitimate points, particularly in the need to further develop and clarify our ethical investment policies, he stressed his view that the issue is a complex one and needs time to develop a policy that is acceptable to all.

*Transparency is not ultimately up to him alone. He did seem favourable to my suggestion of setting up a group of students to discuss investments on a set-basis with those managing them. He said that as investments change daily we can't know what is happening at all times. Discussion was limited by our lack of knowledge about what they are legally required to tell us.

*No alumni that he knows of have currently expressed a concern about SRI and have been more interested in our financial soundness. He recommended that we find interested parties, including fellows, to bring the matter up at governing body.

*He hoped that we would be able to talk to the bursar when he returns from sabbatical in a week or so.

I could tell you more about the investments I saw there, which in any case were from a couple of months and may have changed, but am currently unclear about how much I am allowed to divulge. I'll err on the cautious side to begin with. Suffice to say there were some companies that we had/have investments in that concerned me and could have formed a short blacklist for us SRI types. I must stress though that we have very little actual money invested, though I am still concerned about the principle of the matter.

Seeing that discussions are going reasonably well I don't see the need to bring the JCR or large-scale student protests into the matter yet. If, however, the final agreement that the governing body is prepared to make falls considerably short of what we want then I will re-consider the matter. I believe that I'm likely to meet more resistance from our bursar and that could prove a stumbling block.

Posted on 18/11/04 by Anon