Student Government passes legislation in support of divesting from companies who use fossil fuels

The University of Toledo’s Student Government passed a new piece of legislation Tuesday, Nov. 29 that approved the plan to have the University of Toledo divest from all connections with companies that use fossil fuels. According to Amal Mohamed, President of Student Government, the vote passed with a count of 17-7, with two senators choosing to abstain.

The legislation, which was created by the group Fossil Free Toledo, a student-run anti-fossil fuels activism group, was proposed to Student Government as the first step in getting approval from the university to stop the use of these fuels.

According to their Facebook page, the goal of the organization is “as a student-run group, FFT seeks to promote environmental justice and mitigate the destructive effects of fossil fuel emissions by campaigning the University of Toledo to divest from the fossil fuel industry and maintain sustainable investment practices.”

The authors of the legislation included, Farouk Abu Alhana, Parth M Patel, Abigail Dunegan, Shayan Parsai and Nicholas Parodi.

The legislation provided clear arguments for the divestment, citing the university’s own University Sustainability Policy “in which it emphasizes the university’s commitment to ‘enhance university sustainability efforts, including but not limited to energy efficiency and sustainability in all capital projects, renovation projects, and operations and maintenance within budgetary constraints’”.

According to Mohamed, the effects of the legislation passing in SG will be minimum, but allows the group to show support for Fossil Free Toledo and their overall plan.

“The organization, Fossil Free Toledo, is going to continue to meet and speak with administration in order to see what steps they need to take next,” Mohamed wrote. “The legislation passing was essentially just Student Government showing their support for the movement.”

Some concerns that were raised during the meeting by these senators were possible issues with engineering students who would be attempting to do co-ops with the companies the university plans to divest from.

“Some engineers expressed fear that perhaps companies which we divest from will no longer offer co-op opportunities to the engineering students. However, other engineering students, as well as the authors of the legislation argued that, historically, divestments have never impacted co-op opportunities for students,” Mohamed wrote.

Mohamed wrote that the next step would be for the student organization who presented the legislation to present to UT administration.

“We can expect to see the group of students that proposed the legislation make moves in order to convince the university to divest from companies that are being irresponsible in terms of sustainability,” Mohamed wrote.

According to their Facebook page, Fossil Free Toledo plans to take their plan to the University of Toledo Board of Trustees.

“We also plan to reach out to faculty and the student body to rally support behind our campaign,” their Facebook page stated.

The lines ‘There was a lot of debate during the meeting, before the legislation was passed. According to Vice President of Student Government Cameron Forsythe, five senators spoke out against the legislation including Cody Spoon, Jared Enoch, Jimmy Russel, Andy Taylor and himself.’ and ‘Nadeen Sarsour was the only senator who spoke out in support of the legislation during the meeting.’ was removed due to inaccuracy.