To kick off Divestment Week at Syracuse University, Divest SU and SUNY-ESF teamed up to host the first Divest Fest on Monday night, which focused on discussion and enlightenment about environmental issues.

Nearly 60 students attended the event in the Nifkin Lounge at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. The night began with a panel of three student activists: senior Chloe Maxmin of Harvard, freshman Jonathan Schmidt of SU and freshman Katie Oran of SUNY-ESF, who is a contributing writer for The Daily Orange. They were joined by Matt Huber, an SU professor of geography.

The panel discussed a range of topics including what initially got the students interested in divestment and the relevance of climate justice to other social movements.

In connecting the movements, Maxmin said the climate justice movement “is creating spaces for voices that previously haven’t been heard,” such as women and minority voices.

Huber gave a statement that shined a different light on the struggle for climate justice. He compared the abolition of slavery to the movement to divest from fossil fuels.

“Although very different, especially in terms of moralities, slavery was an energy system just as fossil fuel is,” Huber said.

In his statement, Huber also challenged the audience to think about climate justice in a different light other than solely focusing on those who suffer the impact of environment destruction caused by “developed” countries.

“We need to start organizing around a different rallying cry,” Huber said.

Weston Stroud, a sophomore environmental studies major at SUNY-ESF, said he enjoyed the panel and thought Huber’s comparison between the abolition of slavery and the divest movement was interesting.

Several of the panelists spoke about the current situation with universities invested in fossil fuels and why they believe in divestment.

“We have a meeting with (SU’s) CFO coming up so that is really encouraging,” Schmidt said. “It’s going to be a long process, but we are going to have to start with the small things.”

Both members of Divest SU and those not involved with the organization attended the event and expressed enthusiasm and interest for not only the event, but also the cause.

“It’s a great cause to support. I go to two to three divest events each year,” said Frieda Projansky, a junior public relations and information management consulting dual major.

Divest SU was created after Bill McKibben, a famous environmental author, gave a lecture in Hendricks at SU in 2012. In his speech, he talked about climate change and how the best way for students to be active is to encourage their universities to divest from fossil fuel. From that, a group of students joined together to form Divest SU.

Global Divestment Day is this Friday and Saturday. In celebration, Divest SU is devoting the week to divestment awareness. Tuesday they will be hosting a film screening, co-sponsored by Students of Sustainability, of the award-winning documentary “Above All Else.”

On Wednesday they will be screening another film called “Virunga,” which presents the injustices of oil companies that SU invests in.

“If there’s a company that uses slave labor, you might not want to buy clothes from them. It’s the same idea with universities and fossil fuel investment,” said Emma Edwards, a senior geography and policy studies dual major and one of the founders of Divest SU.

Published on February 10, 2015 at 12:01 am