Around 80 members of the Syracuse University community gathered on the steps of Hendricks Chapel Tuesday afternoon with one goal: to end the university’s reliance on fossil fuels.

They were joined by Green Party gubernatorial candidate Howie Hawkins, who was the final speaker at the rally and spoke for about six minutes.

“You can make a difference. Don’t ever believe you can’t. So keep on keepin’ on,” Hawkins said.

The rally began just after 3 p.m. with around 50 people, but roughly 30 more had joined them by the time the event ended at 3:45 p.m. Attendees called for a complete divestment of SU’s endowment so it would have no financial stake in fossil fuels, but rather to invest in renewable energy sources.

Participants were given orange felt squares labeled with the word divest and a black X, a symbol used by the national divestment movement. Those who got to the rally early also received pieces of paper with the prompt “DIVEST SU FOR” and a blank line underneath. Participants filled in the blank with phrases such as “a generation after ours,” “transparency” and “social justice.”

Hawkins took to the steps of Hendricks just before 3:40 p.m. He encouraged students to keep taking action to end fossil fuel use and maintain a voice in the university’s decisions.

“I support divestment and I wanted to encourage these students to keep acting,” Hawkins said in an interview after his speech. “You don’t know when you’re gonna break through, but you’re gonna break through.”

In an interview before the rally, Ben Kuebrich, one of the organizers, said Student Association and the University Senate both passed a resolution for divestment created by Divest SU and ESF. However, he said the Board of Trustees ignored the resolution. The rally was one way they wanted their voice to be heard, he added.

Kuebrich, a doctoral student in composition and cultural rhetoric, said he and other members of Divest SU and ESF reached out to Hawkins to come to the rally.

Colton Jones, co-president of Students of Sustainability at SU, also spoke at the rally and compared the climate change movement to previous protests in U.S. history, including the civil rights movement and the equal rights movement.

“There have been so many movements and this is our generation’s problem. This is our movement,” Jones said. “We can no longer be ignorant and just live in the blissful state that we’ve been in because we’re not addressing climate change. This is a very real problem and a problem that we all need to come together and fight.”

At the end of his speech, Jones encouraged the attendees to put their fists in the air as a sign of unity as they chanted, “The people, united, will never be defeated.”

Ella Mendonsa, a senior political science and public policy dual major, said that even after uniting as a community, the Divest SU movement has exhausted every democratic process to make SU free of fossil fuels.

“It’s time to engage,” she said.

In an interview, Kuebrich compared the Divest SU rally to the protest against the closing of the Advocacy Center.

“It’s not something like the Advocacy Center where we’re able to say they closed it without telling anyone, and it’s really easy to see how terrible that is,” he said.

Divestment is more complicated, he added. It is important to understand the relationship between the endowment and the fossil fuel industry and the history of divestment movements, he said.

During the rally, Kuebrich encouraged participants to “be a part of the solution and not part of the problem” and to “put that money into sustainable energies and investments.”

Kuebrich said it’s important for students to realize the impact of the rally and the movement.

“Human lives are at stake, this isn’t just about polar bears,” he said.

Kristen Koniuch, a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences spoke at the rally and said it’s time for those who want divestment to rise up and take action.

“What we choose to do next will determine what kind of people and what kind of society we define ourselves as,” she said. “It will determine whether or not we will rise to our historical moment and this is our historical moment. It all begins with a choice and today we can choose to divest SU.”

Chiara Klein, a senior English and textual studies major, read a poem at the beginning of the rally that she wrote about the effects of climate change on future generations.

The end of the poem read: “We’re going to stand and fight and if we watch this world die well/ let our empty lungs and worn out hearts be her eulogy let every voice be raised, be the flowers on her grave, let her headstone read: I was loved/ Let us, write a history that says: I was here.”

Published on September 30, 2014 at 4:51 pm

Contact Rachel: rsandler@syr.edu