THE REJECTED REFERENDUM

Supporters of fossil fuel divestment have seen just how “limited” referendum results can be in pushing the University to change its practices.

Since the divestment referendum was approved with the support of 72 percent of student voters last fall, the University has come out against divestment from fossil fuels several times. Most recently, Faust reaffirmed the University’s rejection of divestment in a letter addressed to the Harvard community in early October.

Despite the University’s firm anti-divestment position, divestment advocates say they are not demoralized.

“[The referendum] showed that [this movement] is not just a few crazy people; this is something that most of the students are really interested in and is a mainstream [issue],” said Harold N. Eyster ’16, a member of divestment advocacy group Divest Harvard.

The greatest benefit from the referendum vote, according to Eyster, was its success in encouraging more students to join the cause on campus and to “galvanize” students across the country to start similar movements on their campuses.

“A lot of the people working directly on our campaign who are an integral part of it right now were alerted to it by the referendum,” Eyster said. “It helped to alert them that [this movement] exists and that it’s something that a lot of other students think is really important.”

Eyster said that although Harvard’s continued rejections of divestment might appear as “blocks” to the movement, he believes the University’s continued engagement with the issue allows the group to keep the conversation going.

For example, the Harvard Corporation Committee on Shareholder Responsibility has met with divestment activists and UC leadership three times since last November. According to UC President Tara Raghuveer ’14, the dialogue in these meetings has gotten “more and more productive.”

“The encouraging thing, and something that I find curious about the case of divestment in particular is that the members of the CCSR don’t have to meet with undergraduates,” Raghuveer said. “These are very smart, very important people and they have taken their time out of their visits to campus, now repeatedly, to meet with the undergraduates who are organizing this campaign.”

ASSAULT POLICY IN LIMBO

The advocates pushing for a revision of the College’s sexual assault policy have also seen that student support can only go so far in convincing administrators to change course.

Last fall, the referendum asking College administrators to reexamine their sexual assault policies passed with the highest level of support–85 percent–among the three referenda. Yet that referendum has yet to generate any policy changes–a disparity that Raghuveer said she finds concerning.

“I think it’s an important, interesting, and troubling observation that the issue that was the most popular—that is the closest to Harvard undergraduates—has received less support, less engagement, and less active response than the other two issues that are University-wide issues that are further from students,” Raghuveer said.

Even before students finished voting on the issue during last year’s UC presidential election, then-Dean of the College Evelynn M. Hammonds told The Crimson that the College’s sexual assault policy was unlikely to change in the near future.