URBANA — Voting season for students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign begins this week. Elections for the Campus Student Election Commission will be held online from Feb. 25 through Feb. 27 through the One Illinois platform.
One of the questions on the ballot asks students to weigh in on the issue of campus financial investments in fossil fuel companies.
The referendum asks students: “Should the University of Illinois System remove its fossil fuels investments within 5 years?”
“It is a barometer to see… how people are feeling,” said Michael Gergeni, Illinois Student Council government liaison and member of Students for Environmental Concerns (SECS), the group behind the divestment movement and referendum. “We know that there’s a lot of momentum for it right now.”
SECS classifies fossil fuel companies as public corporations involved in oil and gas exploration, production, refining and marketing, as well as companies involved in mining industrial metals, power production and gas utilities.
To understand what the referendum means, it is important to see how the University of Illinois System invests its money.
The money invested by the University of Illinois System’s Office of Investments comes from two sources: the operating pool and the endowment pool, totaling $4.46 billion for FY 2023.
- The $3.43 billion operating pool consists of revenue from tuition and fees, state appropriations, student loan funds, grants, self-insurance programs, and hospital and auxiliary services.
- The $1.03 billion endowment pool consists of funding from donors and gifts.
The Office of Investments selects external investment firms to actually invest the endowment and operating funds, according to the U of I System’s investment policy. These funds are different from the endowment managed by the University of Illinois Foundation, which is a separate nonprofit corporation independent from the University of Illinois.
SECS claims that the University of Illinois System holds over $120 million worth of corporate debt in 52 companies with ties to the fossil fuel industry and that this amounts to about 12% of the operating pool corporate bond ownership.
U of I officials dispute these numbers. Spokeswoman Robin Kaler said in an email that the UI System has told the students that it holds “$13 million directly in fossil fuel companies… via bonds – not equity ownership.”
Kaler also notes that this is a 70% decrease from 2019 holdings and represents 0.27% of total assets.
“The U of I and the U of I Foundation do not directly own equity in any coal or oil companies, as almost all stocks are held through externally managed funds,” Kaler said. Such funds are managed by third-party entities that make investments on the university’s behalf.
“And we put our financial muscle behind efforts to promote renewable fuels as an alternative,” she said, “with socially responsible investment practices, new eco-conscious fund managers and a bold new investment in a fund promoting sustainability.”
A similar student ballot referendum in 2019 saw almost 75% of the voting students support the divestment. The voting student body that year was around 7,000 people, according to Gergeni.
These referendums are non-binding, so even if the majority of the students vote in favor of the divestment, the university is not required to comply.
This is something that the campus saw last year, when nearly 75% voted in favor of providing abortion pill access on campus, but U of I’s McKinley Health Center refused to do so.
However, Rudy Lafave, president of both the Illinois Student Council and SECS, believes that the 2019 referendum resulted in progress toward divestment.
In 2020, the year after the referendum, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign announced iCAP, or Illinois Climate Action Plan, which is a strategy to become carbon-neutral by 2050. Objective 9.1 of the plan is to “divest from fossil fuels” by FY 2025, which started in July 2024.
But that objective has not yet been accomplished. The document outlining the goals of iCAP itself states that the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign cannot decide how the U of I Foundation invests funds on behalf of the campus:
“While neither the chancellor nor the university president can make this decision for the University of Illinois Foundation, they can clearly state their support of fossil fuel divestment and specifically request a change from the decision-making authorities. Through this iCAP objective, we will work with the Office of the Chancellor to draft a letter encouraging divestment.”
In her email responses to questions from IPM News, U of I spokeswoman Robin Kaler did not respond to specific questions about objective 9.1 and next steps toward iCAP completion.
Instead, Kaler said in a statement that “the University of Illinois System, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the U of I Foundation value and demonstrate sustainable practices and innovation across our multiple missions, to help achieve the goal of a carbon-neutral economy.”
The U of I will continue to explore ways to reduce its carbon footprint, she said, but no specific plans were outlined.
One of the goals of having the referendum once again on the ballot, Lafave said, is to show how many people support the cause.
“From the conversations we’ve had with Students for Environmental Concerns with the administration, they think that this is a small but vocal minority of students,” Lafave said. “I think the best hope coming out of this is that there is a real and tangible understanding from administration about where students are on our campus with this issue.”
While this referendum is non-binding, the same group of students led by Lafave and Gergeni say they are helping create state legislation that would mandate divestment from fossil fuels by the University of Illinois System, in addition to the Office of Investments and external investment managers.
HB 1155, sponsored by Illinois State Rep. Will Guzzardi (D-39) and five other Democratic representatives, was first proposed in spring 2024 and was re-introduced earlier this year.
Lafave is hopeful the bill will pass the Higher Education Committee this legislative session and go to a vote on the floor after that.
“We know first-hand that President Killeen, and the University of Illinois System lobbying people are actively fighting us in this legislation,” Lafave said. “I think that just goes to show where they think that this bill is and that there is some level of threatening that this bill is doing.”
Asked whether Lafave’s assertions are accurate, U of I System spokesman Steve Witmer said in an email: “The legislation is in the very early stages of the process, and the U of I System has met with one of the bill’s sponsors to share our approach to responsible investing. That’s really all there is to say at this point.”
Gergeni said he believes SECS’ multilateral approach of promoting divestment, with and without a legal onus, is necessary for the prosperity of the university and its students.
“We’re gonna force them to be more sustainable” for the benefit of students and their future, Gergeni said. “And their future cannot exist without protecting the environment.”
Illinois Student Newsroom’s Nour Longi contributed reporting.