ACSR Continues Formulating Statement About South Africa

The Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR) moved closer to completing a statement to the Corporation about its investment policy towards companies operating in South Africa.

The statement should be finished by next week and submitted to the Corporation at its May 2 meeting, several committee members said after their meeting last night.

They would not say what position the statement would take.

"It won't be what the Corporation would want us to do," ACSR Faculty Representative Noel McGinn said yesterday. He added that the statement will focus on the need to use more than financial considerations alone when deciding whether to invest in a company that does business in the apartheid nation.

Several members of the committee--which makes nonbinding recommendations to the Corporation about Harvard's investment policies-said that last Tuesday night's open meeting about South Africa influenced their opinion about the University's connection to South Africa-related companies.

"Some of the points raised at the open meeting definitely aroused my curiosity as to what the Sullivan Principles actually meant." Divinity School Representative Jack Dunlevy said last night.

The principles are a set of equal opportunity guidelines for labor practices for companies operating in South Africa. Thirty-seven of the 39 firms the University owns stock in have signed the principles, but divestiture proponents charge that some of the signatory companies fail to meet the standards.

Before the meeting, Dunlevy said, "I had been around they were the absolute minimum criteria as far as moral and ethical" guidelines for company operations.

ACSR Alumni Member George M. Dallas '56 said he still feels the committee needs to weigh the effects divestiture would have on the Harvard portfolio.

"It's a simplistic response to say that Harvard should divest from any company" that operates in South Africa, Dallas said, adding "that would be telling the portfolio managers" that the University could not buy stock in 35 percent of U.S. firms.

McGinn said that committee members had a much "stronger resolve to express their moral position," adding that besides the open meeting, a group of students who are fasting to call for divestiture have influenced the committee's discussions.

Other Activities

The ACSR last night voted on six shareholder resolutions from five companies. Nancy E. Kossan, the committee's secretary said last night.

One vote concerned a resolution to McDonnell Douglass asking the company to withdraw its bids for cruise missile contracts. Kossan said that two committee members voted for the resolution and seven abstained.

The members who abstained said the resolution fell under an action resolution-their general nuclear arms policy.

Dunlevy, who voted for the resolution said he thought that each resolution related to nuclear arms should be judged individually.