Wellesley students voted to pass a ballot on divestment and disclosure by a large margin on March 3. The ballot, proposed and written by Wellesley’s chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America, asked the Board of Trustees to disclose Wellesley’s investment portfolio and to divest from arms manufacturers.
759 students, or 31% of the student body voted in the election. Out of those who voted for the separate ballot measure, 96.71% voted in favor of the proposal, while 2.77% voted against it. The College Government does not disclose the actual vote count.
The ballot alone does not have any direct bearing on the College’s policy and the Board of Trustees can reject the proposal.
In a statement to the News, the College said the Tuesday student vote was a “non-binding student vote and requires no action by the College.”
“The next step for the ballot-initiative sponsors is to draft a formal request that makes the case for why Wellesley should take the actions they propose,” said the College in a statement to the News.
It is unclear when the chapter will submit a proposal to the College and the Board of Trustees. The College currently has a formal procedure requiring individuals or groups first to submit their requests for review by the Subcommittee on Investment Responsibility, a board committee that includes students, faculty, staff and trustees. The subcommittee would then decide whether it may recommend any action to the Investment Committee, and subsequently the Board of Trustees.
“The trustees recognize that community members may have perspectives that they would like to see reflected in the endowment, and they have a process for considering those perspectives. A ballot initiative is not part of the process,” said Chief Investment Officer Debby Kuenster ’80.
This marks the latest call for divestment on Wellesley campuses after Wellesley partially divested from South African apartheid in 1985 and fossil fuels in 2021.
Wellesley students’ call for divestment follows a broader movement across the United States which peaked last year, marked by encampments, large-scale protests and student arrests on college campuses. In the spring of 2024, multiple universities agreed to weigh the divestment demands, in exchange for students dismantling encampments, but few have moved to disclose or divest.
While the College Government ballot initiative at Wellesley has come a year after much of the calls for divestment across campuses, students have held various protests throughout spring 2024 against the College’s financial involvement in armed conflicts.
Wellesley students did not start any process to formally ask the Board to divest until this year. Students at other liberal arts colleges have protested since last year, only to have their proposals rejected. The boards of Williams, Amherst and Occidental College all rejected students’ demands by voting against divestment from weapons manufacturers or companies with ties to Israel, arguing that divestment was a divisive force complicated with financial risk.
The College currently does not disclose the proportion of its investment portfolio and it remains unclear how much of its investment is linked to arm manufacturers of companies “complicit in human rights violations.”
According to Kuenster, the portfolio is invested in “a variety of strategies managed by many investment firms across hundreds of partnerships and investment vehicles.” The College does not disclose the firms or partnerships in which it is invested, like most of its peer institutions, she said.
