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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (April 1, 1985)
rhe Divestment Drive niversities search for a way to punish South Africa. rhe decision came, appropriately enough, on Lincoln's Birthday. Meeting in Palo Alto, the Stanford ird of trustees took one small step.to •test apartheid in South Africa by voting a conditional sale of the school's 124,000 ires of Motorola Corp. stock. The trade uld be executed, the trustees ruled, if the ool discovered any recent business deal s between the manufacturer and the ith African police. "Our policy calls.for me uinci iianu, cicuu counselor vjioson says that cosigning can taint credit ratings, especially if the company has to go back to the cosigners to cover debts. If a student is refused a card, it may be because he has already damaged his credit rating. If so. he may well want to see his personal credit file. This process can be as simple as writing a letter or can involve office visits to a credit-reporting agency. Federal law gives everyone the right to cor rect errors in a credit record and to include m the file his side of a credit dispute. As students begin to play the credit game, they will learn some tricks, such as timing their purchases right after the monthly close of the statement in order to get a month’s free credit Hut credit authorities emphasize that what they are offering is only a loan; someday it must be paid. If a student does get in over his head, the credi tor will often help work out a schedule of payments, though, as Forges of American Express says, “It's not something we publi cize a lot." Frank Sperling, president of the Consumer Credit Counselors of California, emphasizes that creditors want to help stu dents get started properly so that they won't get into trouble later. "We don’t want to drive them into the ground," says Sperling. The creditors want their customers to pur sue—and afford—the good life. Because, after all, the more money the customers spend, the more the creditors make. JOHN SCHWARTZ Students at South African consulate in \e* York divestment when there has been substantial social injury and when all other remedies have failed," explained university vice president William F. Massy. Two days later, officials at Harvard went a bit further, announcing that it had sold ofTitsSl million holding in Baker International Corp.. an oil-and-mining toolmaker, because the firm refused even to discuss its South African operations. With those cautious moves, two more American universities came to grips with a difficult question of conscience: should they hold stock in companies that do business with South Africa? This issue, known as “divestment," has been a campus fixture for about a decade and is once again back on the boil. At least 38 schools have adopted some form of divestment policy—partial or com plete—and others are considering it, in large measure because of student agitation. The pressure tactics have grown more and more sophisticated. At Yale, graduating seniors will invest their class gift only in a South Africa-free portfolio. At the Univer sity ofTeAas, protesting students still march past the Texas Tower but also, bring in financial'consultants to plead their case. In California, the student member of the state university board of regents won a review of the $ 1.7-billion of"‘the°system's $5 5 billion DONNA BlNDfR SlPA SPCCAlFf AT.URtS* porttolio invested witn compa nies doing business in South Africa. . “When universities start acting together., they can have a big impact,” says law student Fred Gaines, the stu dent regent. "Companies don't want Harvard, Stanford and the University of California saying that they don't manage properly " A UC report on di vestment is due in June. The problem will not have become any simpler by then. Few doubt acade mia's abhorrence of apart heid—“an abomination,” says Columbia College dean Robert E. Pollack. Such attitudes only lead impatient students to de mand that schools put their money where their ideals are. Says David Nather. an as sociate editor of the Daily Texan, “It doesn't show much commitment to say, ‘We'd love to help end oppression, but we can't afford to'.” But that's not the only interest at stake: vast chunks of university endow merits are tied up in blue-chip L .S. compa nies, many of which have long traded with the South Africans. Pulling out of those firms might deal the schools a stiff financial loss and would forfeit any influence campus humanitarians have on company managers. Further, many American firms insist that their presence in South Africa has improved conditions for their black and Colored workers, advances that might disappear with a U.S. pullout. In any case, argues UT regent Beryl Milburn, “You can't settle the wrongs of the world through the investment policies of the University of Texas.” The debate on campus mirrors the con flict within the Fortune 500. About 300 American firms conduct business in South Africa. They employ about 120,000 locals, 70.000 of whom are nonwhite, and have investments of about $2.6 billion. The larg
