Some MSU students want to use the state legislative system to help end genocide in Darfur, Sudan.
In November, members of MSU's Spartans Taking Action Now: Darfur, or STAND, went to a conference at Northwestern University where they learned about how divestment could be used as a tool against the genocide.
The targeted divestment calls for the stopping of financial investments in 83 companies that directly or indirectly help the Sudanese government continue killing its citizens, according to the U.S. organization Sudan Divestment Task Force.
According to the United Nations, more than 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur and at least 2 million others have been forced to leave their homes since 2003. International human rights groups say the death toll is close to 400,000.
Across the country, university groups are working to convince their administrators to stop investing in these companies.
Earlier this year, STAND members wanted to find out whether MSU invests in any of the companies. But, when they could not find the information, they changed direction.
Now, the group is working with their counterparts at Eastern Michigan University to draft a bill to have the state of Michigan divest from those companies.
"We are now focused on getting community and faith-based groups behind the divestment campaign," said Rachel Kulasa, STAND's divestment coordinator.
As it turns out, MSU currently does not invest in any of the companies the task force said warrants scrutiny.
"The fact that we don't have to worry about MSU investing is great," said Kulasa, a political theory and constitutional democracy and social relations junior, who said her group would campaign the university to divest if that wasn't the case.
The university makes investments with its endowment money — which comes from donors — providing an income for MSU. Each year, an allotted portion of the income earned is spent on scholarships, programs and other improvements, while the rest is set away to gain interest.
"MSU employs about 80 investment managers that invest MSU's endowment and other long-term funds," wrote Glen Klein, MSU's director of investments and financial management, in an e-mail. "These investment managers are appointed by MSU's Board of Trustees and are monitored by MSU financial staff.
"The investment managers, not MSU, pick the individual investments that comprise their portfolios."
This is not the first time MSU students have worked with the issue of divestment.
While a student here, Joey Marogil, a 2002 alumnus, helped create the Coalition for Social Responsibility.
That group wanted to create a policy to make MSU divest from companies that might be considered ethically, morally or socially irresponsible, including Playboy Enterprises, ExxonMobil Corp. and Citigroup.
"Across the board, there should be a mechanism for determining if each individual company is a problem," Marogil said.
Students, faculty and the MSU community should be given the opportunity to challenge investments on the basis of whether they are socially responsible, Marogil said. People in control of the university's budget should not be solely in charge of that decision.
The coalition's campaign fizzled out, he said.
Also, during the apartheid in South Africa, student activists helped convince MSU administrators to divest from companies doing business in that country in 1978.
MSU was one of the first U.S. universities to do this.
