Year-Long Coal Divestment Campaign Culminates in Rally

MEDIA ADVISORY - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

25/ OCTOBER/ 2012Contact: Luke Taylor, 203.623.9044, Luke_Taylor@Brown.edu

(PROVIDENCE) Rally to Culminate Year-Long Coal Divestment Campaign as Brown Corporation Meets to Vote on Divestment

Will Brown Become the Largest University Endowment to Divest From Coal Nationwide?

PROVIDENCE, UNITED STATES—If you plan to cover any Brown Divest Coal event, this is the one. The Brown Corporation will convene for its long-awaited meeting and is expected to vote to decide whether Brown will take leadership of a nationwide divestment movement by becoming the largest University endowment to vote to divest their endowment from coal. Hundreds of students are expected to rally, march, and greet the Corporation to demand a yes vote. Several members of the Corporation have been called on to recuse themselves due to their connections to the coal industry, and thus far they have yet to do so, calling into question the legitimacy of the voting process.

WHAT: Students will march to the building where the Brown Corporation is meeting and greet them as they enter to demand the Corporation vote Yes to Divest in its meeting, culminating a tireless year-long campaign.

WHO: Brown Divest Coal, student group; the Brown Corporation; students

WHERE and WHEN: Friday, 10/25/13
2:00-2:20 Faunce Hall, Brown University Main Green (by Brown and Waterman Streets),

2:20-2:30 Marching to Macmilan Hall, 167 Thayer St. (where the Corporation will be voting)

2:30-3:00 Rally outside Macmillan Hall, Corporation members will be entering the building

VISUALS: Over 200 students will rally outside the building to greet Corporation members as they walk into the building, where a huge monument of the nearly 4,000 signed petitions for divestment will line the halls they will walk through to their meeting.

This weekend in PROVIDENCE the Brown Corporation can assume the mantle of leadership in a nationwide movement demanding that Universities be more than Ivory Tower knowledge-generators, and take a moral stance on a fossil fuel industry that is destroying communities and the climate. In the wake of Brown Divest Coal’s op-ed, published by The Nation, demanding that 5 Corporation members with conflicts of interest recuse themselves from the vote, will the Corporation conduct its decision process with integrity and will it vote yes? The Corporation members will bring their suits; the students are bringing their signs. Along with a moral imperative.

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Brown Divest Coal is a student-led campaign calling on Brown University to take a stand against the coal industry by divesting from the 15 largest U.S. coal companies. The campaign is one of over 400 campaigns calling for divestment from fossil fuels, more info about the national movement can be found at: http://gofossilfree.org/