2024-12-02 21:25

Paragraph added to description to increase goal clarity.


New petition description:

No More Tuition Dollars to Fund Genocide!We demand Warren Wilson College (WWC) divest from companies supporting Israeli apartheid and human rights violations in Palestine. For over 50 years, Palestinians have been occupied by Israel (Amnesty International, 2017; O'Dell, 2024). The current campaign has killed over 43,000 people, displaced ~1.9 million persons, and left over 340 thousand facing catastrophic levels of food insecurity, as of November 5, 2024 (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs - Occupied Palestinian Territory, 5 Nov. 2024). The ongoing illegal occupation, as stated by the European Union and many other states (European Union, 2021; Amnesty International, 2019), and the genocide of the Palestinian people by Israel are funded by the United States. (Masters & Merrow, 2024; Schwarz, 2023). There is a pertinent need for institutions like WWC to align their investments with ethical values. Divestment campaigns have successfully happened at WWC such as the student-led fossil fuel divestment in 2015 (Intentional Endowments Network, 2020; Warren Wilson College, 2024). That movement made Warren Wilson a leading college in the initiative to disentangle from fossil fuel corporations through which they have received several sustainability awards. 

Currently, WWC BDS operates with limited information about specific companies in which our institution is invested/endowed. As of this moment, we are working to eliminate our endowment exposure with arms manufacturing, which has been reported by Echo journalist Cal Dooley to amount to  ~0.2-0.3% (Dooley 2024). As we gain more information, our goals will likely be incrementally updated.