by Alissa Ayden
It’s an exciting time to be a responsible investment activist at Amherst. For the past two semesters, the Amherst College Responsible Endowment Coalition (AC-REC) has been working on getting a proposal passed that would create an Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing (ACSRI) at the College. AC-REC formed last Spring as a coalition of about fifteen activist-oriented student groups on campus. We all signed a joint letter to the President of the College, Tony Marx, outlining our intentions and had several meetings with him.. These meetings led to our first draft of a proposal which focused mainly on proxy voting. We submitted our proposal to the College’s Investment Office and then summer came and the coalition members temporarily went our separate ways. (more…)