About 15 protesters were arrested on Tuesday night after refusing to leave the Whitmore Administration Building at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The protesters, who have called on the university system to divest holdings in fossil-fuel companies, began their sit-in on Monday morning, according to the Daily Hampshire Gazette.
The protesters called for Martin T. Meehan, the university’s president, and Victor Woolridge, its Board of Trustees chairman, to commit to full fossil-fuel divestment by Wednesday.
On Tuesday evening university officials responded to the demands by releasing a statement that said, “UMass system leaders today said they would advocate for a policy that would see the five-campus UMass system divest and prohibit direct investment in fossil-fuel companies.”
“Although we find ourselves meeting in a moment of contention,” Mr. Meehan said in the statement, “I embrace and I believe that the university leadership broadly shares the goals that the divest-campaign students have been advocating for.”
Edward Blaguszewski, a university spokesman, said in a statement quoted in the Gazette that ”despite the pledge of advocacy for divestment from fossil fuels by Meehan and Woolridge, the student protesters chose to continue their occupation of the Whitmore Administration Building after it was closed for business. … Following the students’ continued insistence to remain in the building, UMass Amherst officials decided about 9 p.m. to order about 15 protesters removed from Whitmore and to charge them with trespassing.”
Protesters told the newspaper that the officials’ statement had not fulfilled their demands.
“They didn’t give us any commitment on our divestment asks,” Mica Reel, a university sophomore, told the newspaper. “They don’t understand the urgency with which they need to act, but student leaders and community members do.”
Meanwhile, four Harvard students in the group Divest Harvard were arrested earlier in the day on Tuesday for occupying the Boston Federal Reserve building to protest the “Harvard Management Company’s investment in the fossil-fuel industry,” according to The Harvard Crimson.
In a statement cited by the Crimson, Jeff Neal, a university spokesman, said, “Like many peer institutions, Harvard is already acting on climate change through research that occurs across disciplines and throughout the world; through teaching and learning, by providing our students with the tools to confront this issue for generations to come; and on our campus, where we have already reduced our greenhouse-gas emissions by more than 20 percent.”
Last year Divest Harvard occupied Massachusetts Hall, home to the office of President Drew G. Faust, according to the Crimson.
At the time, Ms. Faust told the student newspaper that she wished the group “would focus on accomplishing what we want to accomplish, which is have an effect on climate change, rather than on one particular instrument, which they seem focused on almost to the point of forgetting about what the outcome for such an action would be.”
Fuente de la noticia:http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/students-demanding-fossil-fuel-divestment-are-arrested-at-umass-and-harvard/110338
Fuente de la imagen: http://inthesetimes.com/article/19059/at-9-campuses-students-up-the-ante-against-fossil-fuel-investment-with-dive
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