Undergraduate representatives from the Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility held an open forum Thursday to solicit student input and divulge the committee's voting record.
The 10 students present pressed the group's student representatives -- Sally Newman '05 and Luke Gilroy '05 -- for information on everything from its function to its proxy voting record.
The committee, formed in 2003 to exercise the College's voting rights on shares it owns, has voted on everything from animal rights to weapons manufacturing to nuclear power in its relatively short history.
While the committee generally forms a strong consensus before voting, some issues have led to drawn-out conflict among its members. Newman and Gilroy recalled an especially contentious discussion over the safety and security of nuclear parts manufactured by a General Electric subsidiary.
"Some people were for nuclear power in the first place and others thought that security was a government responsibility," Gilroy said.
Ultimately, the committee voted against the resolution but wrote a letter to its author asking him to revise it.
The committee lacks a set of guidelines and usually votes on a case-by-case basis given independent information provided by Investor Responsibility Research Center, a Washington-based firm devoted to providing proxy research and analysis. It has, however, developed a set of de facto rules regarding morally tenuous practices such as political donations and sustainability issues.
Dartmouth's undergraduate representatives work alongside two graduate students, Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration Adam Keller and others to form a College opinion on resolutions presented to shareholders.
The College has traditionally deferred its proxy voting rights, allowing management to make decisions on resolutions submitted by shareholders. The current committee owes its existence to The Dartmouth Organization for Global Awareness, which roughly three years ago agitated for Dartmouth to disclose its equity holdings.
Dartmouth has customarily remained secretive about its investments, fearing that other institutions would copy its investment strategy. While this information is now available to the Dartmouth community through the Office of Investments, Newman conceded that only four people have viewed Dartmouth's securities holdings.
Students in attendance questioned whether Dartmouth should even be invested in companies whose business practices are unethical. Brown University, for example, chose to divest all of its assets from tobacco companies in 2003.
The committee's undergraduate representatives doubted that the College would divest from ethically dubious companies but said the committee had considered submitting its own resolutions where it found a company's business practices morally repugnant.
"There's been discussion of writing our own resolution. [College] President [James] Wright wasn't excited about putting Dartmouth's name to anything without extensive review," Newman said.
Some of the students who attended the forum came with specific issues in mind, but most simply showed up to learn about the general workings of the committee.
"I want to find out why they're on the committee. I guess they're all econ majors ... I wanted to find out exactly what they do," Chunhua We '07 said.
Both undergraduate representatives have been interested in proxy voting issues for a long time. Newman was part of the original movement to form the committee, and Gilroy was selected by the Student Assembly last year after his internship in Hawaii where he helped revise the state government.
"For us to talk about community at Dartmouth and then trash the environment in India seems hypocritical to me," Newman said.
