Alumni! Please use the boxes at the bottom of this page to sign your name to this letter. It will be delivered September 12th, so we need your signature NOW!
Dear President Hanlon, Executive Vice President Rick Mills, and the Board of Trustees,
In April 2016 the Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility released a report on Dartmouth College’s potential involvement in fossil fuel divestment. The report, commissioned by President Hanlon in 2014, marks the culmination of months of rigorous study. We, concerned alumni of the college, urge the administration to respond accordingly.
Prepared under the leadership of engineering professor Dr. Mark Borsuk, the ACIR report provides an objective analysis of the ethical, financial, academic, and symbolic effects of a range of divestment options. Notably, in its conclusion the authors state that divestment is preferable to no action. While noting that “a determination of which option is most preferable overall depends on a subjective prioritization of objectives”, the report makes absolutely clear that:
“Option B [incremental divestment] dominates Option A[no action], in the sense that according to all objectives, Option B performs at least as well, if not better, than Option A.”[emphasis added]
Key findings of the report include the fact that divestment would, at worst, have a negligible effect on the performance of the endowment:
“the sub-objective of maximizing return on investment will be left substantively unchanged for Dartmouth by any level of direct fossil fuel divestment”[emphasis added]
Additionally, the report found that when ethical, financial, academic, and symbolic objectives are given equal weight, then “Option D (complete divestment from fossil fuels and reinvestment in clean energy) leads to the greatest overall fulfillment of the considered objectives.”
With this information at its disposal, we present the administration with three requests for concrete action:
1. We request that Prof. Mark Borsuk present a summary of the ACIR report to the Board of Trustees.
2. We request that the student group Divest Dartmouth is given an on-the-record meeting with members of the Board of Trustees, by fall of 2016. (The group has been previously promised such a meeting.)
3. We request a hard deadline for a decision on divestment by the end of spring 2017.
Now is the time for Dartmouth to act. As 2016 is set to become the hottest year on record[1], we already see climate refugees from around the world, including Papua New Guinea[2], Louisiana[3], the Marshall Islands[4], and beyond. A recent UN report has found that the climate is changing more rapidly than expected[5]. We await Dartmouth’s response to the ACIR report, and with it, to a defining social and moral issue of our time.
Signed,
Kurt Wehbring ‘1959
Walter Daniels ‘1960
Richard Leach ‘1965
Herb Brown ‘1966 G’1969
Don Pease ‘1966
Jeffrey Rogers ‘1966
Elton Wallace ‘1966
Edward Arnold ‘1967
Paul Beach ‘1967
Gerald Billow ‘1967
Dick Clapp ‘1967
Larry Fabian ‘1967
Peter Golenbock ‘1967
Richard Olson ‘1967
Ken Rosenberg ‘1967
Peter Christenson ‘1968
Arthur Brown ‘1970
Lawrence Riggs ‘1970
Robert Rich ‘1971
Thomas Sherry ‘1973 G’1975
David Goodrich ‘1974
Jan Kublick ‘1974
David Pearson ‘1975
Jim Reynolds ‘1975 GR’1977, GR’1987
MK Beach ‘1976 T’1979
Louise Erdrich ‘1976
Deborah Hope ‘1976
Linda Markin ‘1977
John Sterman ‘1977
Nancy Wasserman ‘1977
Don Wiviott ‘1977
Nate Hine ‘1978
Peter Kelemen ‘1978
Martha Raynolds ‘1978
John Reader ‘1978
Marjorie Rogalski ‘1978
Ellen Meyer Shorb ‘1978
Christine Simpson Brent ‘1978
Alan Berolzheimer ‘1979
Polly Ingraham ‘1979
Joshua Muskin ‘1979
Robert Rufsfold ‘1979
Jim Schley ‘1979
Katherine VanDusen ‘1979
Mitch Cohen ‘1980
Debra Day ‘1980
Anna Frances ‘1980
Kristin Lord ‘1980
AnneFrancis Martin ‘1980
Rebecca Schnier ‘1980
Stephen Smith ‘1980
Jon Lenchner ‘1981
Dinyah Rein ‘1981
Alexandra Stone ‘1981
Tom Bledsoe ‘1982
David Hamlin ‘1982
Kimberly Quirk ‘1982 Th’1983
Kirk Siegel ‘1982
Naomi Bindman ‘1983
Joshua Bornstein ‘1983
Jessica Brown ‘1983
Mickey Carter ‘1983
Frank Davis ‘1983
Perry Edgerton Thomas ‘1983
Carrick Eggleston ‘1983
Peggy Gilges ‘1983
J Allen Hill ‘1983
Elise Morse-Gagne ‘1983
Cirri Nottage ‘1983
Nellie Pennington ‘1983
Dave Ross ‘1983
Martha Viehmann ‘1983
Matt\ Wilson ‘1983
Frohman Anderson Sr. ‘1984
Ann Armbrecht ‘1984
Michael Barrow ‘1984
Maria Cole ‘1984
Chris Covert-Bowlds ‘1984
Susanmarie Harrington ‘1984
David Hooke ‘1984
Mark Montgomery ‘1984
Stephanie Morales ‘1984
Antonia Mulvihill ‘1984
Anne Schwartz ‘1984
Sarah Strauss ‘1984
Lisen Stromberg ‘1984
David Vincelette ‘1984
David Whitenack ‘1984
Diane Bonina ‘1985
Kathy Hooke ‘1985
Joel Margolese ‘1985 T’1990
Jill Morgan ‘1985
Gretchen Sporleder Orr ‘1985
Charles Curtis ‘1986 T’2004
Heid Erdrich ‘1986
Crystal Crawford ‘1987
David Lemal ‘P’1987
Benjamin Moynihan ‘1987
Timothy Ambrose ‘1988
Steve Gutmann ‘1988
Kimberly Hall ‘1989
Ruth F. Bossler ‘1990
Jennifer Silver ‘1991
Jennifer Thomas ‘1991
Elizabeth Marshall ‘GR’1992
Sara Olsen ‘1993
Susy Struble ‘1993
Karen Daniels ‘1994
Jordan Franklin ‘1994
Dana White ‘1994
Jennifer (Widham) Freeman ‘1995
Alison Cherpitel ‘1995
Gretchen Freeman Cappio ‘1995
Charlotte Hanley-Jacobson ‘1995
Gen Kanaie ‘1995
Mandy Key ‘1995
Rob McLennan ‘1995
Charles Ross ‘1995
Kathryn Ross ‘1995
Justin Wells ‘1995
Sean Donahue ‘1996
David Stack ‘1996
Xantha Bruso ‘1997
Chris Carbone ‘1997 Th’1999
Austyn Fudge Borjigin ‘1998
Simon Holmes a Court ‘1998
Joshua Mooney ‘1998
Olivia Carpenter Glenn ‘2000
Megan Jennings ‘2000
Catherine Kilduff ‘2000
Shafika Abrahams-Gessel ‘2001 GR’2002
Jackson Childs ‘2001
W. Kate Collins ‘2001
Georges Dyer ‘2001
Karin Goodfellow ‘2001
Bradford McKeown ‘2001
Rachel Richardson ‘2001
Jennifer Butcher ‘2002
Matthew Cheney ‘2002
Mark Kissling ‘2002
Erica Mintzer ‘2002
Gary Weissman ‘2002
Michael Golub ‘2003
Brent Kesler ‘2003
Pam Piccola-Fales ‘2003
David Turnbull ‘2004
Laura Doering ‘2005
Kelly Sennatt Esten ‘2005 T’2012
Victoria Allen ‘2006
Andrea Lauerman ‘2006
Jonathan Awerbuch ‘2007 Th’2009
Lauren Busby ‘2007 Th’2008
Nicolas Garcia ‘2007
Heather Lisle ‘2007
Susan Dunklee ‘2008
Margo Dunlap ‘2008
Abe Holland ‘2008
Andrew Klein ‘2008
Lena Martinez-Watts ‘2008
Rachel Strohm ‘2008
Hannah Dreissigacker ‘2009 Th’2010
Marissa Knodel ‘2009
Timothy Bolger ‘2010
Jennifer Chong ‘2010
Aurora Coon ‘2010
Margi Dashevsky ‘2010
Stephanie Gardner ‘2010
Jessica Griffen ‘2010
Jan Gromadzki ‘2010
Lauren Lesser ‘2010
Kathleen Oprea Schroeder ‘2010
Andrew Palmer ‘2010
Maegan Patrick ‘2010
Carrie Rosenblum ‘2010
John Schroeder ‘2010
Amma Serwaah-Panin ‘2010
Marc Shapiro ‘2010
Lina Stepnick ‘2010
Dan Susman ‘2010
Brianna Wilkinson ‘2010
Michael Wood ‘2010
Daryl Concha ‘2011
Matthew Dahlhausen ‘2011
Manaure Francisquez ‘2011
Kelsey Johnson ‘2011
James Khun ‘2011
Melisa Krnjaic ‘2011
Jana Landon ‘2011
Karen Orrick ‘2011
Joseph Pearl ‘2011
Lauren Reiser ‘2011
Alex Taylor ‘2011
George Thorman ‘2011
Brittany Wald ‘2011
Kenneth Baclawski ‘2012
Danielle Baez ‘2012
Emill Cashin ‘2012
Stephanie Crocker ‘2012
Kate Desrochers ‘2012
Ian Engler ‘2012 G’16
David Garczynski ‘2012
Ben Hughey ‘2012
Daniel Mott ‘2012
Lucas Sanford-Long ‘2012
Amrita Sankar ‘2012
Leanna Saunders ‘2012 Th’2013
Dylan Summers ‘2012
Maya Viavant ‘2012
Rene Zelaya ‘2012
Angela Zhang ‘2012
Damaris Altomerianos ‘2013
Laura Bryn ‘2013
Greg Buzzard ‘2013
Evan Diamond ‘2013
Andrew Finch-Craver ‘2013
Remington Franklin ‘2013
Kyle Heppenstall ‘2013
Bradley Jacobson ‘2013
Benjamin Katz ‘2013
Janet Kim ‘2013
Elizabeth King ‘2013
Kyle Lawson ‘2013
Alice Liou ‘2013
Rosalie Lipfert ‘2013
Anna Morenz ‘2013
Danielle Nathanson ‘2013
Dana Niu ‘2013
August Oddleifson ‘2013
Jesse Rieb ‘2013
Guillermo Rojas Hernandez ‘2013
Sara Stone ‘2013
Georgia Travers ‘2013
Callen Votzke ‘Th’2013
Callista Womick ‘2013
Laura Wu ‘2013
Melinda Agron ‘2014
Sarah Alexander ‘2014
Frohman Anderson ‘2014
Laurel Anderson ‘2014
Abigail Bard ‘2014
Sam Bauer ‘2014
Michael Berger ‘2014
Arthur Bledsoe ‘2014
Rachel Carter ‘2014
David Clemens-Sewall ‘2014
Aaron Colston ‘2014
Morgan Curtis ‘2014
Jimena Diaz ‘2014
Emily Eisner ‘2014
Carly Emmer ‘2014
Leah Feiger ‘2014
Graham Findlay ‘2014
Zoe Furlong ‘2014
Matthew Garczynski ‘2014
Brian Giunta ‘2014
Christina Goodson ‘2014
Kathryn Gougelet ‘2014
Gina Greenwalt ‘2014
Bing Guan ‘2014
Campbell Haynes ‘2014
Campbell Haynes ‘2014
Meg Heisler ‘2014
Shelby Hinds ‘2014
Eliza Huntington ‘2014
Ellen Irwin ‘2014
Brian Joseff ‘2014
James Kennedy ‘2014
Samuel Kernan ‘2014
Georgi Klissurski ‘2014
Aaron Koenig ‘2014
Adam Kraus ‘2014
Karolina Krelinova ‘2014
Caleb Ladue ‘2014
Bo Marchman ‘2014
Jillian Mayer ‘2014
Catalina Mejia ‘2014
Matthew Melikian ‘2014
Tausif Noor ‘2014
Rebecca Novello ‘2014
Shane O’Neal ‘2014
Kaila Pedersen ‘2014
Eliana Piper ‘2014
Blaine Ponto ‘2014
Jocelyn Powelson ‘2014
Lisa Rennels ‘2014
Alex Rowe ‘2014 Th’2015
Ian Schneider ‘2014
Ariana Sopher ‘2014
Maria Sperduto ‘2014
Piotr Teterwak ‘2014
Mike Urbach ‘2014
Atul Vaidyanathan ‘2014
Natalia Vecerek ‘2014
Autumn White Eyes ‘2014
Mayowa Willoughby ‘2014
Sam Winters ‘2014
Eva Xiao ‘2014
Rett Young ‘2014
Wouter Zwart ‘2014
Cristy Altamirano ‘2015
Laura Bergsten ‘2015
Julia Bradley-Cook ‘GR’2015
Hayley Brown ‘2015
Lily Brown ‘2015
Autumn Brunelle ‘2015
Patrick Campbell ‘2015
Carly Carlin ‘2015
Lorenzo Carlisle ‘2015
Maya DeGroote ‘2015
Kylie Flanagan ‘2015
Victoria Fox ‘2015
Nathanael Friday ‘2015
Yaritza Gonzalez ‘2015
Aliza Green ‘2015
Jonathan Griffith ‘2015
Sarah Hammer ‘2015
Meghan Hassett ‘2015
Rebecca Hu ‘2015
Ari Koeppel ‘2015
Kendall Kraus ‘2015
Evelyn Maldonado ‘2015
Varun Mallampalli ‘Th’2015
Moulshri Mohan ‘2015
Elizabeth Morse ‘2015
Thora Olsen ‘2015
Sam Parker ‘2015
Claire Pendergrast ‘2015
Gautham Prakash ‘2015
Alex Procton ‘2015
Allison Puglisi ‘2015
Tim Purcell ‘2015
Shweta Raghu ‘2015
Lauren Ready ‘2015
Aditya Rohitkumar ‘2015
Matt Stanton ‘2015
Michael Vestergaard ‘2015
Tianyang Wang ‘2015
Katie Williamson ‘2015
Karna Adam ‘2016
Nana Adjewaa-Manu ‘2016
Ryan Amos ‘2016
Brandon Apoo ‘2016
Joseph Bayer ‘2016
Alexandra Berman ‘2016
Lucas Bezerra ‘2016
Jared Boyce ‘2016
Shane Burke ‘2016
Invo Chami ‘2016
Seth Cohen ‘GR’2016
Noah Cramer ‘2016
Katherine Crane ‘2016
Lauren Dahlberg-Seeth ‘2016
John Damionos ‘2016 G’2020
Jennifer Decker ‘GR’2016
Veri di Suvero ‘2016
Franklin Dickinson ‘2016
Kripa Dongol ‘2016
Ann Dunham ‘2016
Gabriel Garcia de Paredes de la Guardia ‘2016
Bradley Garczynski ‘2016
Callan George ‘2016
Connor Gibson ‘2016
Max Gibson ‘2016
James Giles ‘2016
Abigail Hartley ‘2016
Kimberly Hassel ‘2016
Renata Hegyi ‘2016
Kelsey Justis ‘2016
Julienne Keong ‘2016
Jaclyn Kimball ‘2016
Zachary Kratochvil ‘2016
Emma Lape ‘2016
Rachel Margolese ‘2016
Dalia McGill ‘2016
Tramon McZeal ‘2016
Andres Mejia-Ramon ‘2016
Krystyna Miles ‘2016
Anna Miller ‘2016
Priyanka Nadar ‘Th’2016
Andrew Nalani ‘2016
Deidra Nesbeth ‘2016
Melissa Padilla ‘2016
Vickie Pan ‘2016
Madeline Parish ‘2016
Benjamin Parker ‘2016
Emma PeConga ‘2016
Thomas Rover ‘2016
Katherine Rowe ‘2016
Annelise Sauter ‘2016
Sophie Sheeline ‘2016
Amalia Siegel ‘2016
Laura Sim ‘2016
Francis Slaughter ‘2016
Brooke Van Valkenburg ‘2016
Sam Van Wetter ‘2016
Tiffany Wang ‘2016
Kristina Williams ‘2016
Leehi Yona ‘2016
Caitlin Zellers ‘2016
Katie Zhang ‘2016
Rui Zhang ‘2016
Stavros Orfeas Zormpalas ‘2016
and 104 others.
[1] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/first-half-of-2016-blows-away-temperature-records/
[2] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-07/carteret-climate-refugees-new-home/7693950
[3]http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/03/us/resettling-the-first-american-climate-refugees.html?_r=0
[4]http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/02/world/The-Marshall-Islands-Are-Disappearing.html
[5]http://web.unep.org/frontiers/sites/unep.org.frontiers/files/documents/unep_frontiers_2016.pdf
Dartmouth Alumni for Climate Action 