Black Lives Matter NU

 

 

WHEREAS, The Northwestern University Investment Office manages approximately $9.78 billion of University assets [1], significantly contributed to by student tuition and fees, which totaled $546.3 million in 2014; [2]

 

WHEREAS, Northwestern students have no access to information on what corporations the University is invested in [3], and should have input regarding what corporations their tuition money supports;

 

WHEREAS, the duties of the Subcommittee on Proxies, a smaller group within the Investment Committee of the Board of Trustees, include providing oversight of the University’s investment policy with regards to “social issues;” [4]

 

WHEREAS, Northwestern University has committed to “engage locally, nationally, and internationally to heighten our global impact for the greater good;” [5]

 

WHEREAS, The Responsibilities of the Board of Trustees, who control investment through the Investment Committee, include “the preservation of institutional integrity” and “the advancement of the university;” [6]

 

WHEREAS, Investment in corporations profiting from internationally recognized human rights abuses does not impact the global community “for the greater good,” nor does it preserve Northwestern’s “’institutional integrity” or “advance… the university;”

 

WHEREAS, Northwestern lags behind other institutions on socially responsible investment [7], which is both a moral responsibility and a financially legitimate action,

 

WHEREAS, there have been numerous student-led divestment initiatives targeting corporations involved in human rights abuses and other transgressions including an anti-Apartheid movement, Fossil Free NU and NUDivest;

• There is precedent for ASG passing divestment resolutions: for example from South African Apartheid [8], the coal industry[9], and human rights violations in Palestine.

• The student governments at Columbia University and the University of California system passed resolutions to divest from private prisons, and the universities themselves followed suit.

 

WHEREAS, Divestment was a successful tactic that contributed to ending apartheid in South Africa [10];

 

WHEREAS: Northwestern University partially divested from companies doing business in apartheid South Africa in 1985 in response to student pressure. [11] It is imperative that the University continues this legacy of socially responsible investment and should be held to an even higher standard 30 years later;

 

WHEREAS, the following illustrative and non-exhaustive list of companies, in which Northwestern may invest and profit from, that enable human rights abuses and violence;

 

WHEREAS, G4S, the Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO group, have violated the universal right “to life, liberty, and security of person;” “to education;” to “privacy, family [and] home;” “to own property, and ...[not to] be arbitrarily deprived of property”;

 

WHEREAS As of 2013, 8.4% of the United States prison population, or 2.1% of the world prison population, is housed in private prisons.

 

WHEREAS the private prison industry operates half of the immigrant detention centers in the United States, where LGBTQ detainees are 15 times more likely to be sexually assaulted than their heterosexual, non transgender counterparts. [12]

 

WHEREAS 15% of LGBTQ respondents in a 2015 survey of over 1,118 inmates reported being barred from prison programming due to their sexuality. [13]

 

WHEREAS 23% of transgender, nonbinary gender, and Two‐Spirit respondents are currently taking hormones in prison, while an overwhelming 44% report being denied access to hormones they requested. [14]

 

WHEREAS Only 21% of respondents are allowed access to underwear and cosmetic needs that match their gender. [15]

 

WHEREAS private facilities are more dangerous for both correctional officers and inmates than their public counterparts as a result of cost-cutting measures, such as spending less on training for correctional officers (and paying them lower wages) and providing only the most basic medical care for inmates.

 

WHEREAS private facilities exhibit such vulnerabilities because they are not inspected by the Bureau of Prisons, and CCA is actively resisting adhering to BOP standards by spending a reported $7 million since 2007 lobbying against legislation that would subject its prisons to the same federal open records obligations as BOP-operated prisons. [16]

 

WHEREAS a 2011 report by the American Civil Liberties Union points out that private prisons are actually a major contributor to increased mass incarceration, which reinforces an anti-Black racial caste system.[41]

 

WHEREAS Private prisons have a political and economic incentive to advocate to incarcerate more people for longer amounts of time, which disproportionately affects Black people and Latinxs.

 

WHEREAS Private prison corporations, including the Corrections Corporation of America, the GEO group and G4S spend millions of dollars lobbying for more restrictive immigration, drug, juvenile detention and incarceration laws

 

WHEREAS 2.4 million people are in United States prisons, a 500% increase over the last 30 years

 

WHEREAS More Black people are imprisoned today in the U.S. than were enslaved during the height of slavery in the United States.

 

WHEREAS the United States imprisons a larger percentage of its Black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid.

 

WHEREAS Black and Brown people make up a greater percentage of inmates at private prisons than in their public counterparts, largely because they are cheaper to incarcerate.

 

WHEREAS  Nationally, districts serving the most students of color receive about $2,000, or 15 percent less, per student than districts serving the fewest students of color. [17]

 

WHEREAS Between 2007 and 2012, spending on public education was cut in 44 out of 50 states. Specifically under the Obama administration, spending for the most at-risk schools has been cut by 10%, and schools with programs for differently abled students by 11%. [18]

 

WHEREAS The past two decades have also seen a major increase in widespread police funding and assignment to primary and secondary schools, primarily affecting Black and Latinx students. [19]

 

WHEREAS, G4S’ juvenile detention centers in Florida have a 10% profit margin, have a performance goal of a 49% recidivism rate, have inadequate health services and do not offer young offenders structured, orderly and safe environments for them to flourish. [[20]

 

WHEREAS, G4S profits from the growth of private prisons and mass incarceration all over the world, as well as facilitating the detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants on the southwest US border; [21][22]

 

WHEREAS, G4S provides security systems for prisons holding Palestinian political prisoners, as well as security systems for interrogation and detentions centers, where Palestinians are regularly subjected to torture; [23]

 

WHEREAS the CCA has lost control of prisons in many states because of a record of sexual assault cases, extreme lack of health and medical care, poor food and sanitation, record of employee abuse, creating racist and sexist prison environments, threatening employees attempting to unionize, insufficient staffing, falsifying records, violating labor laws, selling goods made by prisoners without compensation and many inmate deaths. [24]

 

WHEREAS the CCA has contracted prison guards to conduct drug raids in high schools, while lobbying for stricter drug laws and more juvenile detention centers, many of which they operate, linking the school to prison pipeline [25]

 

WHEREAS the CCA receives state compensation if the number of inmates in their prisons falls below a quota [26]

 

WHEREAS the GEO group has failed to provide rudimentary mental health services to prisoners which has led to many suicide attempts, some successful [27]

 

WHEREAS the GEO group punishes prisoners who refuse to participate in their exploitative work program by placing them in solitary confinement [28]

 

WHEREAS the GEO group, alongside the CCA, have began to make a profit off the incarceration of asylum seeking mothers and their children, mostly from Latin America, and expose those children to cruel conditions [29] [30] [31]

 

WHEREAS, due to Northwestern University’s lack of transparency in the specificity of its holdings, while it has been confirmed through the NUDivest campaign that the University is invested in G4S, there is not definitive confirmation that the University is invested in the CCA or GEO group. There is no published socially responsible investment policy that would prevent the University from being invested in the CCA or the GEO group at any given time;

 

WHEREAS, investment in these companies shows implicit support for the decisions and actions of these companies, as well as their consequences, which include the killings of civilians, and violations of their basic human rights;

 

WHEREAS, the aforementioned companies have a financial stake in the continuation of these human rights abuses;

 

WHEREAS, the consequences of these companies’ actions also affect the Northwestern community directly, including students whose families experience systematic discrimination and institutional racism, death, injury, and other forms of human rights violations;

 

WHEREAS, the only way to achieve financial neutrality in such situations is to end our investment in and implicit support for such companies through divestment;

 

LET IT BE RESOLVED, that ASG requests that the Northwestern University Investment Committee of the Board of Trustees, its Subcommittee on Proxies, and any other responsible bodies authorized to make investment decisions divest fully from companies profiting from human rights abuses and privatized incarceration but not limited to G4S, the CCA and the GEO group within the bounds of their fiduciary responsibility, until the aforementioned companies cease to enable the human rights violations identified in this resolution.

 

LET IT BE FURTHER RESOLVED, that ASG requests that the Northwestern University Investment Committee of the Board of Trustees, its Subcommittee on Proxies, and any other bodies authorized to make investment decisions refrain from making further investments in companies profiting from private prisons.

 

LET IT BE FINALLY RESOLVED, that ASG shall work to achieve greater transparency in university investments by forming an investment transparency task force.