Column: Secrecy and Injustices of Duke Investing

The Duke mission statement discusses the University's "commitment to learning, freedom and truth" and "an intellectual environment built on a commitment to free and open inquiry." However, when it comes to money, free and open inquiry, and learning, freedom and truth seem to be sacrificed.

First, the obvious shades of gray in fiscal matters arise on our bursar accounts. As Duke students paying 40 grand a year to educate ourselves in such a worthy and esteemed bastion of intellectual activity and social, cultural and academic resources, we are often inclined to question just where some of our money goes, and to demand that we get something out of it.

Quad dues, recreation fees, residential programming? $298 per student for tee shirts, pizza parties, and movies and concerts that we still have to pay for? No student is quite sure where all of this money from these fees goes, and we love using the fact that we pay $40,000 a year to demand something better out of Duke.

In all of this complaining and trying to make things more fun and rewarding, we should also be looking at where our money goes outside of the realm of campus spending. After all, we fund the University, and (some of us) will continue funding it through the Annual Fund and other alumni gifts to the University.

We all are justifiably concerned with where our money goes, and insist that we get the most out of what we put in in terms of our experiences at Duke. But where our money gets invested in the name of Duke, and therefore in our names, is even more relevant.

The glaring problem is, we do not have access to files indicating where Duke is investing our money. We can assume that the Trustees and DUMAC, the Duke Management Company, are investing the Duke endowment in companies with high returns and are making a profit. But why are we not allowed to see where the University invests all of its--our--money? We have a right to know where this money is going, and, as students, the driving force behind Duke's power, we should be helping to make these decisions.

It is easy to be concerned about improving social programming and dining, to make sure that our money is going to best suit us. But we need to be looking beyond these things and start realizing where our money is being used behind our backs. When I, and a few other students, attempted to get a list of companies that Duke is invested in, I was turned down. Last January, I was told that "DUMAC functions as a manager of managers and does not select individual securities. And as a matter of course [members of DUMAC] don't publicly disclose details of our managers' holdings."

It is one thing to not be entirely sure of where the fees in our "tuition and fees" go, but to be denied knowledge of where our money is being invested is a larger, and much more problematic issue. I understand that investments are often fluid and can change day-to -day based on net gains and company performance, and there is competition between universities and their investments. However, this does not mean that the records of our investments should be impossible to obtain. For students, they are.

Why the confidentiality? And why is there not a student-and-staff-run ethical investment committee making sure that our money is not funding companies that promote violence, war, sweatshops and oppression? The companies that Duke invests in, like those of other universities, probably includes companies such as Lockheed Martin, which produces military weapons; Caterpillar, which produces machinery that is used to bulldoze the homes of Palestinians; and Boeing, which produces military planes for many nations, among several others. Other universities, such as Yale, Harvard, MIT and Oxford, use ethical investment committees to ensure that their schools are evaluating the investments and ties that their universities make so that more than pure economic interest is addressed. Although the University as an entity has become a corporation in itself, a logical and necessary step to ensuring some level of integrity for a liberal educational institute of higher learning involves student and staff collaboration on issues involving the University's reputation and corporate, military and international ties. To have a more just system, we need to stop complaining about where our money goes and proactively change the way that Duke invests it money.

Of course, to be free from all implications of human oppression and violence in a system of capitalism would mean not investing at all, but a certain level of honesty and conscientiousness can be reached by the University while it still brings in a net gain. After all, President Keohane's fundraising did significantly increase our endowment, we are paying over $40,000 a year, basketball brings in exorbitant amounts of money and we are not lacking in the application pool.

If our mission statement is challenging us to become adults who "are committed to high ethical standards and full participation as leaders in [our] communities," to "promote human happiness," and to "contribute boldly to the international community of scholarship," I challenge the University to end its hypocrisy and to act with the same level of honesty and integrity by letting students know where our indirect investments are and have a voice in these decisions.

Emily LaDue is a Trinity sophomore. Her column appears every other Wednesday.