Boisterous crowd sends Pitt a noontime message
About 125 students and others waved signs and broke into chants outdoors at the University of Pittsburgh during a protest Thursday demanding Pitt vote this month to shed fossil fuel holdings in it $4.3 billion endowment.
Speaking from a Cathedral of Learning balcony from which a large orange “Divest” sign was draped, activists working with the Fossil Free Pitt Coalition delivered a series of speeches, some of which accused university leadership of being complicit in, and profiting from, harm being done to the environment by coal, gas, oil and related fuels.
The noon-hour crowd made noise but did not disrupt people coming or going from the Cathedral’s Bigelow Boulevard entrance.
Some in the gathering repeated shouts of, “We’re gonna win!” and held signs with messages that included “People over Profits” and “I’d rather be in school but this is important.”
Thursday’s protest rally was the latest in a five-year campaign by a collection of campus groups and community activists. They are looking to the Feb. 28 Pitt trustees meeting on the Oakland campus for a commitment to divest.
The rally coincided with Fossil
Fuel Divestment Day, in which 50 student campaigns across the world were to call on universities to divest from such holdings, Pittsburgh organizers said.
Pitt has stopped short of committing to divest, but its chancellor, Patrick Gallagher, said following a 2018 study on the issue that the school would create an approach for socially responsible investing.
Pitt has said it is committed to fighting climate change and is weighing investment policy changes in order to take into account environmental, social and governance factors.
In September, Pitt spokesman Kevin Zwick said: “Our chief financial officer is working toward the goal of presenting the environmental, social and governance criteria to the investment committee of the Board of Trustees for consideration by February.”