Vic’s sp(oil)ed reputation

On the evening of November 26, scores of Victoria College students flooded into the Cat’s Eye for Vic’s Fall Caucus, which gives students a chance to ask questions to the leaders of the college. For the first time in years, the President, Principal, Dean of students, and Head Registrar were all in attendance. Students showed up in red t-shirts en masse, and there was a buzz in the air as members of VUSAC and other students prepared to ask questions and voice demands regarding Vic’s continued investment in fossil fuels. Students were especially concerned about Vic’s ownership of an oil well in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, a town where roughly 55% of homes have high levels of radon. Weyburn’s health region, Sun Country, has higher rates of cancer compared to the rest of province, likely due to its high amounts of radon pollution, which is the leading environmental cause of cancer and is released through oil and natural gas extraction. Vic’s oil well produces an estimated $200,000 in revenue as of 2001, according to the university. Given the prices of oil at the moment, the current figure is likely much higher. The bulk of the profit from the oil well funds the Vic One program.

After an impassioned and thoughtful land acknowledgement addressing the links between the university, settler colonialism, and fossil fuel extraction from VUSAC’s President, Sooyeon Lee, each administrator had the opportunity to make a short statement. Victoria University’s President, Rhonda McEwen, anticipated the caucus’ attention to divesting from fossil fuels and addressed the issue directly in her opening statement. She expressed solidarity with the students and promised that she was on our side. 

In an earlier interview with The Strand, President McEwen shared her commitment to divestment, stating that “It’s in all our interests as people on this planet to do everything we can…. my job is to work as closely as I can, to keep the pressure on.” In her interview, she noted the Board of Regents (BoR) is the real body that will be able to make divestment happen, claiming that “it’s a top priority for [them].” When asked for a comment for this piece, President McEwen affirmed that “These discussions [regarding divestment] are well under way with the Board of Regents and I believe that we should achieve some resolution this year.”

During caucus, President McEwen hinted at the current movement in the BoR to begin to transition from fossil fuel investment. However, she warned that Vic would need to free up funds in other places, as divestment heralds a loss of income for the college that might affect Vic’s ability to sustain their academic and extracurricular activities. While President McEwen vowed that Victoria University would divest from the oil well, she complicated the notion by hinting at processes in the BoR, central to running the college, that students are not privy to. However, this opacity regarding Victoria’s investments is precisely the concern that many students came to the caucus to voice. 

Student outrage about the oil well among caucus goers did not only stem from the operation of the well, but also, as Vic student, BoR member, and VUSAC councillor Zoë Lazaris explained to The Strand, Vic’s lack of financial transparency and accountability to its students. Lazaris says she recently brought the issue of Vic’s oil well to a BoR meeting only to be met with resistance. The BoR has prevented Lazaris from speaking more about the BoR’s response to calls for divestment though she maintains that she has abided by BoR’s requirement of confidentiality. She told The Strand that she “initially wanted to give [The Strand] more context than what I wrote here, but when I informed the BoR’s chair about it, I was called into a meeting about confidentiality…it does not seem like they want me to talk about this at the moment.” However, Lazaris and Shane Joy, another BoR member, Vice President External (VPE) of VUSAC and a member on the Victoria College Council and Vic’s Indigenous Advisory Circle, view this opacity as dangerous. Joy writes, “something that must be changed is the accessibility of information coming from the Board of Regents. The most important decision-making body at Victoria University is known by very few of its students.” Victoria College has the power to turn away from fossil fuels, and their hesitation to do so stands in stark contrast to the actions of the wider University.

President Meric Gertler’s 2021 commitment to divestment from fossil fuels by 2030 does not include UofT’s three federated colleges: Trinity College, University of St. Michael’s College, and Victoria University. Starting in 2018, Climate Justice UofT, a group formerly known as LeapUofT, has hosted a series of protests and student events supporting divestment, urging Victoria University to take swift action. These events paused during the pandemic, with the group citing the lack of on-campus student traffic and general student fatigue in light of the pandemic. Nevertheless, by the fall of 2022, the student BoR members collected over 300 signatures on the Divest Vic! Petition.

And yet, five percent of Vic’s $530 million endowment still comes from fossil fuels, an estimated 26.5 million divestable dollars. On March 9, 2022, the student members of the BoR held a special meeting on divestment, presenting Divestment at Vic to mixed reviews from committee members. While some displayed sympathetic remarks toward divestment, others were more hesitant. Even the consulting agency that manages Vic’s finances disagreed with the University’s considerations of divestment. 

One of the major questions surrounding divestment at Vic is whether it will cause damage to the financial stability of the college. Although at first glance full divestment from a $26.5 million portfolio may seem irreparably damaging, evidence suggests that financial portfolios that exclude socially-damaging companies do not tend to face persistent financial penalties. In the long term, fossil fuels are actually poor economic investments. In fact, studies conducted by Deutsche Bank and Mercer conclude that portfolios that divest from and refuse to invest in socially-injurious investments see a more neutral or positive impact on their returns on investment compared to those that maintain or actively invest in sectors such as fossil fuels. But just because the Investment Committee views climate change as a financial risk does not mean that all of those on the BoR do; to others, climate change is merely an ethical risk the BoR needs to consider. 

Nevertheless, the science is clear: there is no future where we simply adapt to climate change that will come from the current, business-as-usual approach. At COP27, António Guterres, chief of the United Nations, warned that “we are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.” The past eight years have been the warmest on record, according to a UN report, and there are no projections for this warming to slow down, given the state of fossil fuel consumption. By the end of the decade, the Earth’s surface is expected to heat up by 2.8 degrees Celsius—0.8 degrees higher than the 2015 Paris Agreement’s maximum cap—by the end of the decade. The agreement pledged to maintain global warming below 2.0 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels and preferably below 1.5 degrees Celsius. A study published in Nature found that to not surpass the 1.5 degree goal, an estimated “60 percent of oil and fossil methane gas, and 90 percent of coal must remain unextracted” by 2050. Moreover, “oil and gas production must decline globally by 3 percent each year until 2050.” Though, the researchers behind the study warned that they “probably present an underestimate of the production changes required” to stay below the 1.5 degree goal. 

This feature came into existence after students involved with equity and sustainability groups here at Vic approached The Strand. Joy co-wrote VUSAC’s Statement on Divestment. When asked how familiar he is with UofT’s plans for divestment, Joy states: “I read President Gertler’s ‘Letter to the Community’ when it was released in October 2021. Although a step in the right direction, it was certainly long overdue, having been pushed for by students for over 7 years by the time of the letter’s publishing.” When it comes to Victoria University specifically, Joy says that he “only became privy to the details of whether [Vic] had made progress on [the] divestment front following [his] election to the Board of Regents in April 2022.” 

When The Strand asked VUSAC’s Sustainability Commissioner, Amy Mann, the same question she told us: “I am quite familiar with UofT’s divestment plan… [as] a lot of my work [with Climate Justice UofT] has been around ensuring UofT is accountable to [its divestment] plan and critiquing it where it is warranted.” 

Lazaris also shed some light on the work that student representatives on the BoR try to do, stating: “Last year, the other student representatives on the BoR and I advocated for Vic to divest their endowment from fossil fuels…We tried to use UofT’s [divestment] plan to urge Vic to do the same, and we made considerable progress.” Regarding UofT’s divestment plan, Lazaris adds: “Climate Justice UofT pointed out a number of areas for improvement in a statement [made] last year, such as concern with how long the timeline is.” 

We were curious to know these students’ reactions upon finding out about Vic’s ownership and operation of the oil well, as this is a fact that a lot of students do not seem to know about, especially those who are not involved with VUSAC or other equity and sustainability groups. Joy told us: “This [fact] came as quite a surprise to me, as I did not expect the college with which I chose to affiliate, and which has committed to and prides itself on supporting Indigenous communities, would contribute in such a way to the development of industries which disproportionately negatively impact them.” Similarly, Mann explains: “I have heard rumours about Vic owning an oil [well] since I was elected Sustainability Commissioner last April. However, the idea that Vic would be directly perpetrating the very extractive actions that are jeopardising the lives of its students seemed crazy and conspiratorial. I only learned a few weeks ago that it is in fact true.” 

The consensus within the Vic community is clear: Vic needs to divest and it needs to do so sooner rather than later. “The refusal to divest marks a major reversal of the progressive stance Vic has been praised for,” Joy explains. Similarly, Mann believes that “Divestment is an important step towards stigmatising and disempowering fossil fuel companies. It’s the least we can ask of an institution that claims to be a climate leader.” Still not convinced that divestment is necessary? Well, as Lazaris puts it: “Right now, students at Victoria College are attending an institution that, at the same time as educating them, is funding the destruction of their homes, extracting oil on stolen land, and fueling a crisis that is already causing [the] displacement and death of those that live in particularly vulnerable areas.” 

There remains the question of what should be done with the oil well should Vic decide to divest. Naturally, there will be many factors to consider when coming up with a solution, but we wanted to get other students’ opinions on the matter. Lazaris explains: “Given [the evidence surrounding climate change], I believe that Victoria College should decommission the oil [well]”; Mann also believes that the well should be decommissioned. 

While many students at Vic are passionate about sustainability and want to take part in encouraging Vic’s divestment, it can be hard to think of actionable things that students can do to make a difference. When asked for suggestions, Joy stated that students can sign “the Divest Vic! Petition, follow VUSAC and Climate Justice UofT on their social media pages to keep up with their organising and advocacy efforts, and attend VUSAC meetings to continue discussions with council and other students about the best paths forward.” Mann adds that students “can also join the VUSAC Sustainability Commission, [which] does advocacy work at Vic,” and Lazaris emphasises: “Talk about this stuff! The people with more power than us at Vic care when we talk about these things. They care about Vic’s reputation as a progressive college.”

The message is clear: Victoria University knows the harm that its endowment portfolio causes. The refusal to discuss the portfolio with students is evidence of its elusiveness. As an institution that prides itself on its progressiveness, inclusion, and intellectual prowess, there’s no doubt that it is aware of the climate catastrophe and yet, by not divesting, it contributes to environmental collapse. Vic cares about its reputation, so it minimises and deflects from conversations about its involvement with fossil fuels. And yet, Vic has yet to make the impact that would ultimately solidify the identity they choose to advertise, through radical divestment. The Strand calls upon the institution to divest from fossil fuels, involve student leaders in policy decisions regarding the climate, and promote greater transparency between the BoR and students. They must do this to prove that they care about the future of not only their student body but also of our planet. 

With files from Michael Elsaesser.