Allegheny College: Go Fossil Free!

As public pressure to confront climate change builds, we call on Allegheny College to immediately freeze any new investment in fossil-fuel companies, and to divest by the year 2020 from direct ownership and from any commingled funds that include fossil-fuel public equities and corporate bonds. This should occur at the same time as our goal of becoming climate neutral by 2020 and will serve to reinforce and solidify the goals that the college has already made towards leadership in sustainability. We are proud of our institution's dedication to solar, wind, geothermal heating, and efficiency retrofits as well as a dedicated interest in systems of sustainable agriculture, but feel strongly that as long as we continue to support the fossil fuel industry in such a direct manner these actions lose their weight and the college will lose credibility as a progressive and forward-thinking institution that actively demonstrates the ethics and values that it teaches. We believe such action on behalf of Allegheny College will not only be a sound decision for our institution’s financial portfolio, but also for the wellbeing of its current and future graduating classes, who deserve the opportunity to graduate with a future not defined by the inherent injustices that come with an industry that has been scientifically proven to create issues of health, societal injustice, and loss of biodiversity on a global scale.