With the help of Dartmouth student activists, students at Wellesley College have successfully pushed their school to divest from Hydro-Quebec.
Wellesley administrators announced Feb. 15 that they have sold approximately $17,000-worth of holdings in the Canadian hydro-electric company.
A year ago Dartmouth's Board of Trustees voted to divest from Hydro-Quebec because of protests from students on campus.
Dartmouth students were the first to protest their institution's ownership of bonds in Hydro-Quebec. Many of those student activists are in contact with divestment initiatives on other campuses today.
The student activists said the company's James Bay project threatened the environment and violated the human rights of the Cree population indigenous to the area, which the proposed project will flood.
"Basically, the entire ecosystem is being degraded because you can't flood the size area that they are flooding without destroying the ecosystem," said Sean Donahue '96, who was active in last year's campaign on campus.
"Dartmouth can't stand for Native American rights on the one hand and support this kind of project on the other," Donahue said.
Through the University Alliance for the Protection of James Bay, Dartmouth students like Donahue, who were active in the campaign that convinced the College to divest from Hydro-Quebec, have aided activists at other schools by talking to them and giving them information.
"We're basically giving moral and organizational support to those other campaigns that are going on," Gen Kanai '95 said about Dartmouth students' involvement in the Alliance.
The Alliance has helped activists lead successful divestment campaigns at Wellesley and Boston and Harvard universities.
Roopaly Phadke, a leader in Wellesley's divestment campaign, said Dartmouth's Alliance members were very helpful.
"I consider it very valuable to have them with us, because they've had such close experiences with this campaign," she said.
Amy Sprague, who helped lead the campaign at BU, said she thinks Hydro-Quebec has begun to react to the Alliance's collaborative effort.
Sprague said the company proved very cooperative and offered to buy back their bonds when BU administrators first told them they wanted to sell their holdings.
"I think that they're trying to get out of universities to a place where they're safer," Sprague said of Hydro-Quebec. "I think they know what's going on and it scares them."
Currently, Alliance members are concentrating their efforts on the campaign at Tufts University, which has $2 million invested in the company.
This weekend, several Dartmouth students will travel down to a rally organized by the Alliance at Tufts.
"They have not only a right but a responsibility to look at how their money is being spent," said Sean Donahue '96, who will be going to Tufts for the rally.
New campaigns have also just gotten underway at Williams and Wheaton colleges.
"There's definitely a unique situation at every college. Short of inference and advice, they don't have too much to offer," said Williams student Darby Jack about the Alliance members. "But information and advice can be very powerful."
Jack is helping to get the divestment campaign at Williams underway after discovering three months ago that his college had $1.3 million invested in the company.
