A Response to Hillcrest Graffiti

As student organizers within the divestment campaign on this campus, we would like to make clear that groups that have been working towards divestment at Middlebury, including the Socially Responsible Investing Club, Divest for Our Future and Sunday Night Group, disapprove of the recent appearance of graffiti on the Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest. We do not know who the perpetrators are, nor do we understand why it was done.

We hope that productive discourse around divestment will continue to center on the issues themselves and will not be diverted by a small action taken by an unknown individual or group of individuals. Middlebury still has approximately 3.6 percent of our endowment invested in fossil fuels and approximately 0.6 percent invested in arms industries, and divesting is urgent.

We stand by our original goals of divesting our endowment from the fossil fuel and arms industries and are continuing our campaign while working closely with the administration and other campuses around the country.

Thank you,
Student Organizers for Divest Middlebury