Some great investigative work by Jonathan “Thropedo” Thrope ‘10 in this week’s Student on Amherst’s endowment.  Our endowment has grown 4.6% from June 30, 2007 to June 30, 2008.  It’s a far cry from the obscene 27.8% return we took home last year, but considering the downturn of the economy it’s a good haul.  Of course, this number does not factor in the past three months, which have probably caused the 4.6% to disappear.  And poor Williams - dropping 5% and the sole top spot in the USNews rankings in the space of a few months.  But the real loser here?  Obviously, it’s the University of Pennsylvania (-3.9%).  Don’t they, like, have a business school or something?  Could a monkey on a typewriter have done better?

This isn’t the only endowment-related news that’s surfaced in the past couple weeks.  Greenreportcard.com has published their annual College Sustainability Report Card.  Amherst receives a B+; an improvement from last year (B) and the year before (B-).

Now, I’ve always found these Report Cards a little bit strange.  They attempt to provide a cohesive rating of “sustainability” by taking six measures on the environment and three measures on the endowment.

Sustainability means meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Are these considerations guiding how resources are managed in campus operations and endowment practices? The Report Card is designed to identify colleges and universities that are leading by example on sustainability. The aim is to provide accessible information for schools to learn from each other’s experiences and establish more effective sustainability policies

I think that the Green Report Card fails to convince that these things are really at all related.  Nevertheless, I agree that both the College’s practices involving the environment and the endowment are critical.  I’m happy to accept independent analysis of both.

The big improvement from past years is in endowment policy.  In a post last May, I lamented our “D” rating for endowment transparency and challenged students to stop donating to the College until it improved.  Well, I suppose we should all give the the administrators that made this happen a pat on the back, because now we are getting all “A”s:

The college makes its endowment holdings and proxy voting record available to members of the college community on a password-protected website.

Furthermore:

Students, faculty, and staff serve on Amherst’s Committee on Shareholder Responsibility, which makes proxy voting recommendations to the board.

The endowment is now entirely transparent for members of the College community and we now have a Committee on Shareholder Responsibility.  Wow!

What’s especially surprising is how fast all of this happened.  Normally, colleges and universities operate at 56K when embarking on initiatives like this.  It’s so surprising, it’s suspicious.

Suspicious, you say?  That’s right.  I don’t buy any of this.  There is no password-protected website.  There is no Committee on Shareholder Responsibility.  What a joke.  The Green Report Card got this information wrong.  I don’t know if someone at Amherst misled them, or if they got us confused with Williams, but either way it stinks.

I’m not trying to impeach anyone here.  I believe that either we’re all missing something, or there has been an honest mistake.  I don’t think anyone is intentionally lying.  Regardless, someone has to set the record straight.  And if that means calling up the Green Report Card and telling them to change the grade, then that’s what we’ll do.

You can disagree on the particulars of what our endowment policy should be  - Jack Liebersohn ‘09 and I did in May - but you can’t disagree that we need to be honest about what that policy is.  So if there are any folks in the College community that can set the record straight, let us know.  Otherwise, this is not the last time you’ll be hearing about this.