This week’s MCSG meeting featured a Q-and-A session with President Brian Rosenberg. Rosenberg took questions on various topics, including the Dean’s list, Macalester’s carbon neutrality plan, the possibility of a test-optional admission policy, student body diversity, and an increase in the demand for STEM classes. Rosenberg also responded to Fossil Free Macalester’s Oct. 20 op-ed…
An audience of Macalester community members and visitors crowded into JBD Lecture Hall to hear environmental activist Winona LaDuke speak on March 1. The room overflowed with spectators, who sat in the aisles and dragged in extra chairs when seating ran out. LaDuke is best known for founding Honor the Earth, a nonprofit advocating for…
Last Friday, October 7, Macalester’s pro-divestment student organization Fossil Free Mac (FFM) staged a large-scale rally while the Board of Trustees (BoT) was on campus. FFM is currently advocating for Macalester to divest its endowment of all stocks held in the Carbon Underground 200 (the world’s top 200 fossil fuel-related companies), which amounts to approximately…
“Our investments should reflect our values. If we value urban sustainability, we must divest.” This was the message chalked outside of Carnegie Hall last Friday, calling for the Board of Trustees to divest the endowment from fossil fuels. Other chalkings included opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), a Bakken oil pipeline currently being constructed…
In February of this year, Fossil Free Mac began the formal process of asking Macalester to divest our endowment from fossil fuel companies. We wrote and presented a proposal to the Social Responsibility Committee, a group of faculty, staff and students who serve to advise the administration on issues of responsible institutional behavior. Next Tuesday,…
Monday, November 11th marked the beginning of climate negotiations at COP19, a meeting of the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change. On the first day, lead negotiator for the Philippines, Naderev (Yeb) Saño made a sobering, passionate speech to his fellow representatives – 190 other world leaders. In the wake of superstorm Haiyan, he called…
On Oct. 17, 13 Macalester students walked into the Sierra Club’s offices in Minneapolis to find cubicles already crowded with other young people—some high school students, some students like us from colleges and universities across the state, and some alumni of these institutions. We packed into the office space with suitcases, backpacks and sleeping bags….
