Posted on 04/09/2015 9:26:10 AM PDT by mbarker12474
DivestUMW sit-in spans a week [University of Mary Washington in Virginia, fossil fuel divestment]
STUDENTS CONTINUING SIT-IN TO PUSH board TO DIVEST OF FOSSIL FUELS
“WE’RE STILL GOING STRONG. WE’RE SUPPORTING EACH OTHER AND THE SUPPORT FROM FACULTY AND ALUMNI KEEPS US GOING.” NATE LEVINE, UNIVERSITY OF MARY WASHINGTON JUNIOR
Posted: Saturday, April 4, 2015 12:00 am
BY LINDLEY ESTES/THE FREE LANCE-STAR
University of Mary Washington junior Nate Levine was planning to spend Easter at home with his family.
As a member of DivestUMW, he will instead celebrate at a sit-in protest in the first floor hallway of George Washington Hall.
“We’re still going strong,” he said. “We’re supporting each other and the support from faculty and alumni keeps us going.”
The sit-in, which turned a week old on Thursday, is made up of students who want UMW to rid its endowment of investments in fossil fuel companies.
The protest began March 26 with 20 people sitting outside of University of Mary Washington President Rick Hurley’s office.
About 130 people spent some time at the sit-in over the course of the week.
DivestUMW club members have specific demands for this sit-in: that the board create a subcommittee to study divestment and commit to pulling all of the university’s investments in the coal industry by 2016. The board decided earlier in March not to create the subcommittee.
“We’ve been sitting in one week and continue to get really empty rhetoric and responses from the board of visitors,” DivestUMW member Rabib Hasan said.
He also said the atmosphere on campus has changed.
On Monday, the Feminists United on Campus club held a march against rape culture, and on Wednesday, students protested tuition hikes.
Hasan said he thinks students are holding their governing body more accountable.
DivestUMW member Sarah Kinzer said they don’t have an end date for the sit-in, and they won’t leave until their demands are met. She said a UMW alumnus has promised to bring them Easter dinner.
Lindley Estes: 540.735-1976 lestes@freelancestar.com
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Several articles/posts by writer Lindley Estes on this topic. A more recent article is "DivestUMW reaching out to prospective students" at: http://www.fredericksburg.com/news/divestumw-reaching-out-to-prospective-students/article_902a8a21-73f0-5482-88f4-3eab5f02176c.html
and when they cmplain about it respond with “We were only complying with your request.”
So how much of Virginia’s coal taxes paid for that school and the salaries of its staff?
Perhaps they would like them to invest in some of those negative interest bonds that are being sold in Switzerland and elsewhere in Europe?
By the way; do you know what field the highest paid grad was in last year? He was a petroleum engineer.
colleges are the perfect petrie dish to grow this kind of political microbe.
Things haven’t changed since I went to college way back when. Students and faculty are still self-aggrandized know-it-alls.
What is “reading day before finals”? I don’t remember having this.
ROTFLMAO
“University of Mary Washington in Virginia”
Must be a sister college to
University of Sheila Jackson Lee....
I think the college administration should agree to reduce their consumption of fossil fuels by turning the heat and electricity off to the dorm rooms of all students participating in the sit-in, and by forbidding the students involved to bring any motorized vehicle onto campus. If they own a car or motorcycle, they must keep it off campus grounds and walk everywhere on campus. That should help reduce the college’s “carbon footprint” a bit, right? And it should help the students feel virtuous and self-righteous without impacting others.
Shut it all down. Let their education be teachers scratching with sticks in the dirt.
Since according to the best satellite data, the world hasn’t warmed in any measurable way in 18 years and 4 months... this “sit-in” demonstrates only that these brainless twits don’t even realize that they have been had. Without fossile fuels none of them would be able to enjoy basically any of the luxuries we all enjoy in this country... things like food, shelter and electronic gizmos. Take their iPhones away from them and make them go “sit-in” their bedrooms.
Sounds like a day set aside for cramming all the stuff they didn’t bother to learn during the semester.
Here is how you fix the middle class.
Call every parent of each child who thinks we shouldn’t use fossil fuels. Ask them to take away their children’s cars for 1 year. They will save on gas, insurance and wear and tear.
That could put 5-7k back in their pockets.
If Mary Washington were alive today she would be whacking them over the head with a broom to beat the stupid out of them.
Nope to Oprah WHINE!!!!
Screw that, kill the wifi. That’ll get ‘em scattering.
They want to go back to the good old days of... whale oil! Perfect.
No joke : )
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