By Jessica Newman, May 2008

Different people have different ways of coping with their anger and anguish. For Michael Marks, it was starving himself for 10 days, surviving on nothing but juice and shoving it in the administration’s face.

            Marks, a senior at the University of Florida, was just one of 13 students who fasted anywhere from 2 to 11 days in a hunger strike performed by UF’s Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS. The protest came after a year of attempting to persuade President Bernie Machen and UF’s Board of Trustees to adopt SDS’s policy of Socially Responsible Investing.

Marks said he has a “99 percent sneaking suspicion” that the university is investing in companies that are profiting off of the war in Iraq, which is why he decided to join the fight.

            “This is a racist, corrupt, depraved, money-making war that will go down in the minds of the people who want freedom as an absolute catastrophe for human kind,” he said.

            The fact that the administration could be supporting this war coupled with the fact that it cannot be held accountable for its investments is an abomination, Marks said. The administration could save thousands of students the guilt in the future of knowing they financially backed an illegal war, he said.

            The SDS’s campaign called for the establishment of a transparency committee that would report to the Board of Trustees on the investments of UF’s $1.2 billion endowment fund. Transparency, SDS says would ensure that the university not invest in corporations that profit from the war in Iraq, create environmental destruction or conduct human rights abuses, among other things.

            The hunger strike was an extreme attempt to get some response from the president on an issue the SDS raised months earlier.

            SDS began its campaign about a year ago, when the students were initially fighting for the divestment from shares in firms that profit from ethically questionable business practices. Divestment is a lengthy and complicated process by which investors sell all the shares held in a particular corporation. But as the students pursued their goal, they realized that UF’s endowment fund is invested behind closed doors. Immediately the purpose of the campaign shifted from abolishing socially irresponsible investments to having a right to know where the money is invested.

            “I understand the goal is to maximize profits,” said Skeet Surrency, a member of SDS who ingested only juice for 10 days. “But you should be concerned with the effects of your campaign.”

            Not long after SDS learned that UF’s endowment was not subject to public scrutiny and could not be held accountable for its investments, the group sent President Machen a letter in late August stating its intention to protest the private investment policy of the university. About a week later, a mass of students met in Turlington Plaza and marched to Tigert Hall, home of the president’s office.

            On Sept. 5, members of SDS and other students gathered at the Rally of Transparency. The marchers had blindfolds placed over their eyes to symbolize the blindness of the public regarding the university’s investments. Student’s chanted things like, “We’ve been kept in the dark!” and “Where does all the money go?”

            When they arrived at the president’s office, authorities told them that President Machen was not in at the time, but they would be happy to give him a message. Two students delivered SDS’s proposal for socially responsible investing, or SRI, to President Machen’s secretary.           

            Then on Oct. 9, the president agreed to meet with five students from SDS to discuss the investment plan, which he called, initially, a good idea and a legitimate concern. In fact, in a letter to SDS, the president says he “wholeheartedly (agreed) that there are certain circumstances in which UF should evaluate its investments.”

            At this meeting, SDS presented a three-page proposal for the creation of a transparency committee to oversee the investments of UF’s endowment and to report to the Board of Trustees, UF’s highest governing body. The committee would consist of four students, four members of the faculty and four alumni, who would represent the public and reassure the people that the university is not investing in questionable companies.

            After presenting President Machen their proposal for the establishment of such a committee, he promised the students an answer within a month.

            Members of SDS left the meeting feeling initially victorious. In an interview with the Independent Florida Alligator, SDS member and campaign activist Richard Gutierrez expressed his optimism with the outcome of the meeting.

            “It’s nice to know that the bureaucracy controlling UF is not so distant,” he said. “It’s becoming a much better working relationship.”

            The optimism only lasted as long as it took for President Machen to respond.

            In November, he sent a letter to SDS stating he and the Board of Trustees had taken the group’s proposal into consideration, and they decided to review recommendations from the administration on investments. He cited the board’s decision to consider divesting in firms it considered capable of causing “substantial social injury.” The president also said the board would consider a policy used to oversee the Florida state pension plan, which bans investing in 57 companies deemed socially irresponsible. 

            “With regard to your specific proposals, I am not able to recommend them to the Board of Trustees,” President Machen wrote. “We believe the Board of Trustees’ newly adopted policy and our other considerations provide the necessary framework to invest in a socially responsible manner.”

            But SDS said these seemingly progressive actions had nothing to do with what it asked for, saying it lacked faith in the Board of Trustees to make real socially responsible investment decisions, and for the new policies adopted did not hold anyone accountable. Furthermore, the group said, the university’s endowment lies in hedge funds and mutual funds, which are exempt from many of the limitations the board has put in place.

            A week later, SDS responded in a letter to the president that ended with a warning: “You must realize that a working SRI policy is inevitable at UF. What you’ve got to decide is whether it will be implemented at the end of a long, embarrassing struggle, or if there is perhaps something much greater to be gained by working together towards this end now.”

            SDS and the students, who had initially felt the administration and higher-ups in the university were on their side, now realized the struggle would be more arduous than they originally anticipated.

            Over the course of the next few months, SDS successfully scrambled to get the necessary number of signatures to put a referendum on the Spring 2008 student ballot to establish a transparency committee. In the election, 81.5 percent of the student body voted in favor of the creation of such a committee.

            Despite the overwhelming support, President Machen and the board of trustees had done nothing by the end of the semester to make investments subject to some form of public scrutiny.

             “They have ignored us, and they have ignored the students,” Surrency said. “We’ve been brick-walled.”

            After all of this and two more meetings with the president and board of trustees, SDS felt slighted by the administration and left with few options to progress in its campaign.

            In April, 13 students decided to go on a hunger strike in an attempt to push the administration into a corner. About half drank nothing but water, and the other half ingested only juice.

            “The administration wants to appear progressive,” said Esteban O’Sullivan, a freshman at UF who fasted for nine days. “But the reality is a different one.”

            The students had intended to fast until either President Machen agreed to meet with them or until May 1. But after one faster fainted from lack of food and another fell off his bike, SDS called off the hunger strike, and was once again ignored by the administration.

            As the noticeably thinner hunger strikers met on the steps of Tigert Hall April 22 to officially end the fast, few showed up to watch them eat their ceremonious oatmeal raisin cookies and present a report card on the university’s investment policy to the president. The report card was blown up and put on display in front of the building, and Marks stood strong with a sign that read, “UF’s got spirit, but where’s its soul?”

            Clint Mitchell, a UF sophomore who fasted for 11 days, felt let down after going through so much only to be ignored again, he said.

            “The first four days of the fast were horrible,” Mitchell said. “I was puking all the time, I had terrible headaches and I got constant chills. But then it just became repetitive.”

            But while the hunger strike failed in the sense that no meeting with President Machen was achieved, Mitchell and others feel it succeeded in other ways, such as increasing public awareness and gaining the attention of the administration.

            “It strengthened my willingness to fight the administration on the issue,” Mitchell said. “And I guess we’ll just have to bring more cookies next time.”