University of Virginia students campaigning for the institution to sell its stock in Unocal because of the oil company’s ties to the military regime in Myanmar claimed victory after learning that the institution had sold its 50,000 shares. The students said they hoped the sale was the first step in a broader university policy on ethical investing.
Virginia officials, however, said the decision to sell was made for financial reasons, based on a stock manager’s “assessment of Unocal’s prospects,” and not because of student pressure.
Alice Handy, the university’s treasurer, said the decision to sell the shares -- worth about $1.5-million -- did not come from the Board of Visitors or from university officials. “It’s a stock that he had traded in and out of for 12 years,” she said of the manager, Richard Mayo, adding that there was nothing to keep him from adding it back to UVa’s $1.7-billion portfolio.
Students said the decision was a victory for their nine-month campaign. “I don’t know why that stock was sold, but the endowment [now] much better reflects the values of the University of Virginia,” said Andrew Price, a fourth-year student who heads the campus’s Free Burma Coalition. (Myanmar was formerly known as Burma.)
Mr. Mayo subsequently told The Daily Progress, in Charlottesville, Va., that the controversy over the stock had been a factor in his October decision to sell it.
The university had been urged to divest the stock by the coalition, the Student Council, and seven Nobel Peace Prize winners.
Students are also pressing the university to establish a policy on ethical investing, which would be developed by a committee of students, faculty members, and university administrators. Along with a ban on owning stock in companies that do business in Myanmar, the students say the university should urge companies that UVa invests in to pursue ethical practices, and should divest the stock of any company that profits from human-rights violations such as slavery, rape, and torture.
Nationally, the Free Burma Coalition, based in Washington, is pursuing divestment efforts at the University of Michigan and with TIAA-CREF, a pension fund with many academic participants.
http://chronicle.com Section: Money & Management Page: A37