ACSR


 * toc

The Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR)** (2007 - present) is a committee designated as an student-run advisory mechanism to the Board of Trustees for making socially responsible investment decisions. The ACSR's charter calls for a membership of three undergraduate students to submit formal recommendations on how Tufts University uses its proxy vote on various issues that come before it as a major investor. However, there has been widespread disagreement surrounding the conditions of its formation in 2006-2007, particularly in relation to the size of the committee's membership, its say in the Tufts endowment's proxy votes and other investment decisions, and the committee's relationship and communication with the larger Tufts community. Since its formation, concerned members of the Tufts community have in numerous ways expressed discontent over various issues concerning the ACSR. Critics of the administration see the ACSR as receiving insufficient attention from the school and cut off from the community at large by being forced to sign nondisclosure agreements. Differing viewpoints over the uncertain status of the ACSR have led to increased awareness and dialogue throughout the community since the committee's creation.

=History=

Creation
The ACSR was originally proposed by a group of concerned members of TCOWI who began to push the administration for more endowment trasnparency and oversight, stemming from concerns that Tufts may have been invested in weapons manufacturers or other corporations that may have been profiting from the Iraq war. They proposed a ten-member committee, composed of undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and alumni, to represent the different constituencies of the Tufts community.

First TCU Senate resolution
On April 6, 2008, the TCU Senate [|passed a resolution] in favor of expanded ACSR membership and powers by a vote of 19-0-3.

Spring 2008 work and Board of Trustees rejection
After half a year of organizing the membership and completing its charter, the ACSR began work on providing input to the university's proxy resolutions in the Spring of 2008. However, this process usually consisted of research and reports that were written and submitted to the Board with no response or feedback. It was not until September 2008 that the ACSR was informed that the entirety of their work failed to meet standards of professionalism that the Board of Trustees had expected

Students at Tufts for Investment Responsibility (STIR)
Disappointment and frustration that acted as a catalyst to the founding of STIR in Fall 2008. Concerned students first began discussing the issue formed Students at Tufts for Investment Responsibility to lobby the administration for greater rights, powers, and transparency within the ACSR's process.

Escalation: second TCU Senate resolution, talks, and Board of Trustees meeting
On February 2, 2009, at the urging of STIR's core membership, the TCU Senate passed [|a second resolution] very similar to their first, calling for an expanded ACSR with more power and oversight. The 18-0-0 vote was the TCU Senate's first unanimous decision in two years.

In the Spring of 2009, members of STIR held two meetings with high-level Tufts officials after a petition similar to the TCU Senate's resolution was delivered to the Board of Trustees, President Bacow, Executive Vice President Patricia Campbell, Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees Peter Dolan, and others. While they were unable to secure concessions on the size and scope of the ACSR's membership nor give it binding powers, the ACSR was permitted to speak again before the Board of Trustees in May 2009. There, ACSR Chair Gabe Frumkin discussed the committee's role in advising the Board on proxy issues relating to climate change while encouraging a broader relationship between the ACSR and the Board on a number of other issues.

=Controversy=

= =

Membership
Supporters of the ACSR, including STIR, are under the consensus that the ACSR must include faculty, graduate students, and alumni to properly represent the community at large, a position that the administration opposes. Executive Vice President Patricia Campbell has stated on the record that she and the trustees never intended for the ACSR to be more than a three-member committee of undergraduate students. “The trustees have been very clear from the beginning that this is a student committee,” she said. “This was the decision made by the board in May of 2007, and this position has not changed," [|she said] in an Daily interview on February 3, 2009. Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees Peter Dolan has [|publicly expressed] his opposition to alumni being represented on the ACSR. “The trustees by and large are alumni,” he said. “We already have quite significant representation from alumni as we think about some of these issues.”

STIR has stated opposition to these views, calling for the ten-member committee plan that was originally proposed. From [|their blog]: "Many other schools have taken steps to create powerful advisory or oversight committees comprising faculty members, alumni, graduate and undergraduate students, and other democratically chosen representatives, which is what was originally proposed to the administration. Instead, what we have is a small committee (three undergraduates) which has little to no say in any investment decisions ... STIR advocates an ACSR that is allowed to be influential, open, and representative of the Tufts community."

Nondisclosure agreements
One of the most controversial aspects of the creation of the ACSR has been the implementation of nondisclosure agreements on the members of the ACSR, which pro-transparency advocates have opposed. According to STIR's blog, "the ACSR is completely cut off from our community by nondisclosure agreements, preventing them from discussing their work or serving as true representatives of the Tufts community, as well as from making better informed decisions with the support of others." In a February 4, 2009 Tufts Daily [|article], [|Responsible Endowments Coalition] Organizing Director Cheyenna Weber remarked that the NDAs "reflect a larger recalcitrance on the part of the school to release information to the wider student body and to remain accountable to that body in some way."

Perceived lack of communication and feedback
The rejection of the entirety of the ACSR's Spring 2008 proxy vote work by the Board of Trustees has been blamed on a lack of professionalism on both sides. According to a February 4, 2009 [|Daily article], "ACSR members say that after they submitted several recommendations and met with Executive Vice President Patricia Campbell and Trustee Vice Chairman Peter Dolan, they learned that all of their work had been disregarded because it did not meet appropriate standards." Executive Vice President Patricia Campbell referred to the semester's work as "not the kind of in-depth research and advice the trustees hoped to see from the students." On the other hand, STIR founder Martin Bourqui referred to the ACSR-Board relationship as “working basically blind" and that "not realistic for [the ACSR] to actually be able to get anything done under those circumstances."

=See also=

History of activism surrounding the Tufts endowment Students at Tufts for Investment Responsibility (STIR)

=External Links=

[|Schools with existing Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) committees] Media coverage:
 * [|"TCU backs endowment advisory committee"] Tufts Daily, April 15, 2008
 * [|Full text of the TCU Senate's second ACSR resolution], February 2, 2009
 * [|"Groups petition to expand ACSR"], Tufts Daily, February 4, 2009
 * [|"Trustees approve expenditures, renovations"] - coverage of the February 6, 2009 Board of Trustees meeting