The Campus Takes a Crack at Dartmouth's Portfolio

NOW THAT THE TRUSTEES HAVE pulled out the College's investments in companies doing business with South Africa, are Dartmouth officials breathing any easier? Hardly. Now comes an environmentalinvestment issue: Dartmouth's $8 million bond holdings in a massive Canadian energy project called Hydro-Quebec. Last December the Trustees chose to divest those bonds. The College issued a Delphic announcement quoting Vice President and Treasurer Lyn Hutton. "The College highly respects the government of Canada and makes no moral judgment about projects being built by Hydro-Quebec," Hutton said. "This decision is made for reasons specific to our community."

Hydro-Quebec is a quasi-governmental hydroelectric power-generating development in the James Bay region of Quebec. The venture plans to provide huge amounts of cheap electricity to the United States and Canada, and even to Europe. The bad news is that rivers are to be diverted, land flooded, and an entire ecological system covering 410,000 square miles transformed. Mostimportantly, the lands to be wiped out include territory claimed by Cree and Inuit Indians.

Opponents of the project, including a student group called Dartmouth Divest Hydro-Quebec, say the project is not even financially viable. The State of New York canceled a $20 billion contract for electricity in November of last year, giving the company a potentially crippling blow. But Dartmouth opponents' main argumentis that the projectviolates the rights of Native Americans and by implication insults Dartmouth's own Indian students. "Dartmouth has made a commitment to Native Americans and should uphold that commitment," said Bart Bingenheimer 94, a leader of the opposition group.

The Trustees' decision followed a recommendation by Dartmouth's Countcil on Investor Responsibility. a committee consisting of faculty, administrators, students, and Trustees. The Council admitted that its own decision process was "highly politicized," and concluded that "it cannot serve as the judge or jury in this very complex internal Canadian political and economic affair." Nonetheless, the committee went ahead and recommended divestment: provided that the College wouldn't lose any money in the process. The Council said its recommendation was not based on environmental or cultural considerations—and then, with no apparent irony, stated that the College's continued involvement in the issue would be "inconsistent with its traditions, history , community standards, and values."

What's next? The Trustees clearly were trying to avoid setting a precedent for future divestment from morally incorrect ventures. But it had already done that with the South Africa decision. Expect future protests of investments in other alleged despoilers of the environment and in military contractors.