The dispute over financial transparency on Campus includes many student organizations. Several groups have demanded more information on the College’s budget and the endowment investments

While the College regularly releases a certain amount of financial data, students ranging from environmentalists to pro-Palestine advocates to student senators to OSCA leadership have expressed dissatifaction with the institutional information available on investments.

“There is a lot on the financial reports that is either not clear or doesn’t cover too much,” he added. “We don’t know what department gets what each years, we don’t know exactly what student services is. I don’t think that any of these are defined.”

Annual financial reports are posted online for 1995 through 2003.
“Students have access to a lot of financial information,” College President Nancy Dye said. “Anyone who wants to can read the audited financial statements on the website. I have generally been of a mind that we share budget information at all times. If people have questions they are always able to ask them.”

Vice President of Finance, Andrew Evans, said that all of the investment information the College is willing to disclose is available on the College’s website.

“Yes, annual financial statements of a general nature on the operating budget are available,” Climate Justice member Michael Murray said. “However, the data contained in them is limited, and there are many valid reasons for demanding a more detailed report.”

He expressed frustration over Board charges not reflecting the actual cost.

“As I understand it, these charges are not related to the real costs of room and board, but rather, they serve to gather money into a large pool which then is spent on everything, part of which is room and board,” Murray said. “In other words, the distinction between tuition and room and board on our term bills is misleading.”

The budget transparency is only one side of the argument. The other side is the request for transparency in the endowment investments.

“Oberlin students are part of a coalition of 22 colleges with students pushing their schools for transparency and/or socially responsible investment,” Rachel Marcus said, a member of the Coalition for Transparency in Investment and a member of the Students for free Palestine said.

“The argument for endowment transparency is a simple one,” Murray said. “As stakeholders in the institution, we, as students, have a right to know where the money is going.

“We know the size of the total endowment and the general categories of investments, but we do not know where the money is actually being invested,” he added. “Other than that, however, investment policies are not disclosed.

“We could call this financial transparency campaign a ‘Right to Know’ campaign, and thus not a divestment campaign per se,” Murray said. “Certainly, many groups, including my own, would want divestment from certain companies and sectors, but that notwithstanding, our common cause at this point in time is simply transparency.

He also said that a big amount of the College’s investment money goes into a so-called hedge fund into Farallon Corporation, against which a group called Unfarallon raises accusations of violations of public trust. According to the group, Farallon has made high-risk investments in environmentally detrimental projects. In 1994, Farallon attempted to pump and sell water from Baca Ranch in Colorado, potentially drying up hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland and wetland, according to the website of the organization, www.unfarallon.info.

“The college makes no direct investments, we pick managers to make all of our investment decisions,” Dye said. “We probably have 25 to 28 managers. We have managers of fixed investments and alternative investments. We leave to them what specific investments they make.”

“We task our managers to meet or exceed benchmarks and if they don’t we fire them. We do not publish our investments,” Dye said. “I don’t see what precise stocks and bonds we own and even if I saw it I would know that it won’t be the same down the road.”

A question on the matter of transparency is included in this year’s Senate referendum.

“Should the College disclose a more detailed version of its annual operating budget than what can be found in the college’s annual financial report?” is how the issue appears on the online version of the referendum. The Student Senate basically formulated the matter and sent it out to the student body.

“The Student Senate doesn’t have a position officially,” senior senator Vivek Bharathan.
There are students who strongly disagree with the request for transparency.

“As students of Oberlin College we are blessed with many great opportunities and a wealth of resources that many of our peer institutions lack,” first-year senator Matt Kaplan said. “It is my conviction you can assess the financial issue at hand without making the names of companies public.”

“When you have too many eyes and ears thinking they have a say in the decision-making that makes for an inefficient process,” senior senator Ronnie Goines said. “Plus, the argument that we are shareholders of Oberlin College has been made but when we talk about the Colleges investments we have to understand that isn’t our money. The money that the college invests from the endowment is alumni gifts, fundraising etc, not tuition.

Yet Oberlin’s student groups are not alone in this movement for transparency.

“Schools like Mount Holyoke, Hampshire and Williams have suceeded in convincing the College to invest part of its endowment in local community banks and credit unions,” Rachel Marcus said. “Colleges are wealthy institutions often in poorer areas of the country. Lorain County is the poorest county in Ohio. As such, I believe Oberlin has a responsibility to be accountable to the economic situation of the community we are situated in.”

“I think money is always political and powerful, ,” Marcus said. “Since this institution has a lot of money and since we as students invest a considerable amount in this institution, we should have a say of how to be accountable to the Lorain county community.”