Socially Responsible Investment Committee

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About SRIC

Change we want to see: At ExxonMobil, we will be requesting that they formally denounce their knowledge about climate change and to establish a scholarship that will fund graduate students to get advanced degrees in climate science.

At Urban Outfitters, we will request that they have more supply chain transparency and that they will display information such as where they source their cotton to ensure that they are abiding by their ethical values, and not sourcing it from locations that have poor labor standards.

Where we get our funds: SRIC uses funds from a grant that was earned for the committee and also money that was fundraised by our committee’s adviser. This money is SEPARATE from the college’s endowment.

How we choose what to invest in: SRIC has held blind votes in the campus center, where we hand out ballots with descriptions of companies without their titles, and students have chosen where they would like change to occur. Going forward, surveys on what students want to invest in will be distributed via Google Survey. The committee is also receptive to student and club input in where students would like to see change.

How SRIC is unique to Bard: Clubs similar to SRIC, such as UPenn’s Social Responsibility Advisory Committee, exist at other institutions, but they are only advisory committees and have little to no rights to make investments like students at Bard do. They are only allowed to make recommendations to the managers of funds at their institutions.

Students in similar committees at other institutions, such as Divest Harvard, generally call for the divestment of funds from companies or industries they believe to be immoral, and to reinvest in a socially responsible company.

At Bard we specifically choose to invest in companies we feel need improvement to be more socially responsible in order to make positive changes from within.

Establishment: SRIC was founded in 2007 by an empowered group students who wanted to see where the college’s investments were going. These students received trustee approval to vote the proxy rights on any of the holdings on the endowment and to make investments themselves. They also established Bard’s Social Choice Fund, which is a fund that invests in companies that demonstrate direct and measurable environmental and social impacts and screens out any “sin” stocks.

Past Initiatives: SRIC​ ​at​ ​Bard​ ​introduced a resolution for McDonald’s that asked the company to stop its use of harmful pesticides on its potatoes. McDonald’s now monitors all of its potato pesticide use, which is over 25 percent​ ​of​ ​​potatoes​ ​in​ ​North​ ​America, alongside phasing out the most harmful pesticides and meeting with Bard SRIC on an annual basis.