LSU’s Student Senate passed a resolution Wednesday “to urge and request the LSU Foundation to divest from fossil fuels.”
The measure, authored by Graduate School Sen. Alicia Cerquone and co-authored by several others, passed by a wide margin on a 37-2 vote, with eight senators abstaining.
Its passage comes after a group of LSU community members marched to the foundation building earlier in the month to demand divestment from fossil fuels.
Divestment, as laid out by the resolution, would mean ceasing investment of the university’s endowment in “companies that extract, refine, develop, or sell fossil fuel resources and/or engage in anti-climate lobbying.”
The foundation is chiefly responsible for managing the university’s $700 million endowment, about 2-3% of which is tied into companies involved in fossil fuels or anti-climate lobbying, according to the resolution.
“As a public university, students should have a say in how the funds that support Louisiana State University are invested,” the resolution says, “and the LSU Foundation should be more transparent about the investments they make with endowed funds.”
The resolution also points to the acute environmental problems in the state.
Louisiana’s coastline is quickly receding, a danger worsened by rising seas due to the burning of fossil fuels. And residents who live on the fence lines of petrochemical facilities — the 85-mile corridor called Cancer Alley — have long sounded alarm bells that the pollution was causing higher rates of cancer, respiratory illnesses and other health problems in their communities.
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Sharon Lavigne, an environmental justice advocate in Cancer Alley, urged the flagship university to end its investment in fossil fuel companies.
“We want LSU to divest from the companies that are poisoning us and killing us for profit while we don’t get anything,” said Lavigne, whose organization Rise St. James has called for large companies to divest from fossil fuels, in a statement included in the resolution.
To take effect, the resolution needs Student Body President Anna Catherine Strong’s signature or for the time period for presidential action to lapse with no action.
See how student senators voted on the resolution in the searchable chart below.
