SSI Travel Grantee: Decker McElroy

Decker McElroy was granted a $50 SSI travel grant in order to attend the Divestment Convergence in San Francisco, California in April of 2014. Decker wrote a summary of  the experience for the Ecologue.

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On the weekend of April fourth students from 75 schools across the US and Canada meet to San Francisco for the second ever Divest Convergence. I got to go down with three other students to represent OSU and learn more about divestment from fossil fuels as a movement.  The general goal of the divestment campaign is to take college and university money out of fossil fuel investments in order to lower educational institutions contribution to global warming and to send a message that fossil fuels are harmful to society. At the convergence we got to learn about other schools successful campaigns and what steps they took to get their schools to divest.

Going to the convergence made me realize that OSU is ahead of many other universities in sustainably issues but we have a long way to go to achieve divestment. People knew OSU by name and knew about our specific sustainability actions and goals! The schools that have been successful in divesting are mostly small private schools. This gives OSU a chance to be the first big public school to divest and lead the way in sustainability for schools across the country. I learned that divestment will be a slow process but that by using the advice given by experts at the conference OSU should be able fully divest from fossil fuels. I came back being proud of OSU and its sustainability efforts.

– Decker McElroy