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Student activists are continuing their call for Bowdoin College to divest from fossil fuel companies, and will bring their case to the college’s board of trustees in October.

In April, about 100 members of Bowdoin Climate Action gave to Bowdoin College President Barry Mills more than 1,000 signatures collected over two years calling for divestment. At the time, Mills told The Times Record that the college would not divest. He has since made arrangements for Bowdoin Climate Action members to meet with the trustees when they come to the college in the fall.

Student activist Miles Goodrich said Bowdoin Climate Action would present a similar showing to the trustees as they did in April, to “show that Bowdoin College is not beholden to (climate change) deniers.”

“The issue is beyond debate, and is about science,” Goodrich said.

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Mills was recently quoted in The Bowdoin Orient student newspaper: “For me to break the deal that we’ve made with people who have given money to the college for generations, there has to be uniform agreement that the cause that we’re breaking it for is not some political cause or social cause that some people believe in, but others don’t. … Though I happen to believe that climate change is a hugely important issue, about 50 percent of America doesn’t.”

While he has stated that he believes that climate change is a real issue, in a letter to The Orient, Mills stated that there is no consensus as to what to do about it, noting solutions range from conservation, higher gas prices, hydraulic fracking, or investment in solar, wind, or nuclear energy.

“I believe it is inappropriate for Bowdoin to ignore our duties to the college and our endowment by essentially picking ‘the winner’ among these many positions through divestment from fossil fuels,” Mills wrote to The Orient. “And those who assert that the economic consequences of divestment to our endowment would not be substantial are profoundly misinformed. The ‘symbolic’ statement of divestment would result in significant changes to our college that would affect each and every one of us today as well as future generations.”

Goodrich, speaking to The Times Record on Monday, said he was disappointed in Mills’ comments. “We have an obligation to act,” said Goodrich, citing what he called a “moral duty” to divest.

According to Goodrich, Bowdoin has disclosed that it invested 1.4 percent of its $1 billion endowment in fossil fuels.

In February 2013, Mills and Paula Volent, Bowdoin’s senior vice president for investments, told The Orient that the investment in fossil fuel companies are made through commingling funds containing hundreds of other stocks. Divesting from fossil fuels would cost the college more than $100 million over 10 years, according to Volent.

Bowdoin Climate Action is asking that the college divest over a five-year period.

Meanwhile, Goodrich said that the next round of signatures will be gathered when the new freshman class arrives in the fall. “It will show that this is an issue young people care about, and that it will not go away when I graduate,” said Goodrich, who will be graduating in the spring of 2015.



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