Students led an effort to rid the College’s endowment of investments in for-profit prison companies, calling it a moral issue. The divestment occurred after talks with President Nugent and William Longbrake, Chair of the Board of Trustees.

Stephen Lumetta

News Editor


On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Black Student Association (BSA) President Chadwick Smith ’17 announced that the College had chosen to divest from for-­profit prison companies.

“Coming in as BSA president, I was [thinking] ‘What are my goals?’ And that was one: getting the College to divest,” said Smith.

After dialogues about racial justice on campus toward the end of last semester, Smith, Jahqwahn Watson ’17 and Derrius Jones ’18 spearheaded an effort to send a list of demands to President Georgia Nugent. 

Student organizations contributing to the list included BSA, Queer People of Color, Men of Harambee and the International Student Association, among other organizations. The list, which included 18 demands, was submitted in early December. 

One of the demands was that the College should not be invested in for­-profit prison companies. 

Nugent met with a few of the students, and William Longbrake, the Chair of the Board of Trustees, also met with some students to discuss the demands and ask questions. Longbrake asked Smith for the companies from which they wanted to divest, and Smith supplied him with the names of two companies: G4S, a security services company, and the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA).

Longbrake then contacted Director of College Investment John Sell to see if the College had any investment holdings in the companies. As it turned out, the College had $1,800 in a market index composed of 4,000 companies, one of which was a company that the students had requested the College not invest in. 

This $1,800 commitment in an index of 4,000 companies was out of an endowment of approximately $265 million, according to Sell.

The committee tasked with managing the endowment then swapped the $1,800 out of the index for the S&P 500 index. Nugent informed Smith and Watson in an email shortly after Christmas.

Sell emphasized that the College never decided to specifically buy or sell the prison companies. Rather, the College had previously invested in an index that contained one.

“We were happy to meet the students’ concerns without any significant impact on the endowment,” said Sell.

Smith was also pleased with the result.

“I remember when I first read about Columbia University being the first college to divest in the nation from prison companies,” said Smith. 

“We talk about having an equitable and just campus, but we also want holistic justice so we want to make sure that the College isn’t involved in someone else’s imprisonment” and injustice, said Smith.