UVM Goes Green…From War Profits

Published April 1, 2008

By Bill Ottman and Matt Mantone

Well, it seems that UVM has us blindly dipping our hands into the blood of the Iraqi people. Did you know that? I suppose it’s not a University’s first concern to release its stock holdings, but I’m sure that UVM students would love to know if their money were helping to fund the war.

The University of Vermont has millions of dollars invested in Halliburton, General Dynamics, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, DynCorp, and Northrop Grumman Corporation.

These companies are profiting greatly from the war whether it be through weapons manufacturing, hired security or private contracting. Does the list stop here? Hardly.

Right now the Divestment campaign is focused on war profiteering, but we’d like to mention to every student a few other UVM stock holdings: Monsanto, Wal-Mart, and McDonalds… Only the friendliest, greenest investments here at the nation’s leading school in environmental education. Want to see the rest of the list? Shoot us an email or stop by the financial office. They’re free to see. Well, most of them.

Hello Rubenstein School of Natural Resources, did you know the United States Department of Defense is the leading contributor to CO2 emissions? Oh yes, UVM benefits nicely from the war.

I thought UVM was a green school dedicated to social justice. Am I confused, or do we not advertise ourselves as such?

The University’s Mission Statement claims, “We are a community that values respect, integrity, innovation, openness, justice, and responsibility and promotes the intellectual capacity to engage in ethical decision making…”

The school’s goal is “…enhancing the cultural, social, and economic life of Vermont, the nation and the world.”

Are we really going to say that we enhance the social and economic life of Vermont while we pay workers poverty wages? Are we frauds?

A whistle and a wink to you, students in Humanitarian Studies, while you read the $500 dollars worth of textbooks on human rights movements, sociology, and cultural relativism, the people serving your food and washing your puke off the wall can’t afford to work just one job with three children at home. It’s that nice four year chunk of tuition money coupled with our hefty endowment that helped DynCorp gun down innocent Iraqi civilians outside of U.S. or Iraqi prosecution.

Contracted workers at UVM are still paid poverty wages. Workers have been denied the right to organize for years, and have been threatened with firing for making the attempt. They are still not paid a Livable Wage after years of obvious campus support. What’s the deal?

Tent City has started. Are we going to allow the administration to go behind our backs and compromise the values we claim to uphold? They have branded us as dedicated to social justice while ignoring the very people who keep the school alive! Allowing workers the right to organize and paying them Livable Wages, the real ways that we could be socially just, we are not.

We have buildings dedicated to the environment and social justice yet when you open the door to the closet, it’s all just a show. A big round of applause for the UVM administration’s playwrights, actors and stage crew, you did a great job! I promise, I couldn’t even see the fire and brimstone lapping from behind the curtains. You did such a great job convincing us all that we’re a school that we can be proud of!

Yet now we have the blood of war and the tears of oppressed workers on our diplomas. We’re going to need you to either wash those off for us, or print a whole new set without the fancy embroidered lettering on environmental and social justice. Let’s make the change happen.

Tent City.

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