ASWU moves forward with endowment management plan, seeks board of trustee approval

Graphic by Robin Linares.

On Thursday, Oct. 2, the Associated Students of Willamette University (ASWU) senate voted 12-1 with one abstention to approve the new divestment proposal to remove the ASWU endowment from the Willamette University endowment. Now, ASWU seeks board of trustee approval of the proposal. 

The new proposal requests to remove the approximately $400,000 ASWU endowment funds from the university endowment and place the funds in a general ledger (GL) account, a type of account that acts similarly to a checking account, meaning that the funds would not be invested elsewhere and would not accrue any interest. Under the proposal, the funds would no longer be considered an endowment, and would be renamed the ASWU reserve.  Funds in this GL account would not be invested in any way. However, ASWU would gain more financial control over the ASWU endowment and would no longer need to seek board approval to withdraw funds from it. 

This proposal differs from the initial plan ASWU voted on this past April following a months-long task force looking into potential endowment management options, which voted to divest under the assumption that ASWU could reinvest the funds under a separate ASWU-controlled endowment management fund. However, this semester, university administrators notified ASWU exec that this plan would no longer be an option, hence the new proposal.

While the senate vote was overwhelmingly in favor of moving forward with the divestment plan, one senator and former ASWU endowment task force member, Ernest Jones (’28) voted no on the proposal. In conversation with the Collegian, he expressed concern about the financial future of ASWU under this new proposal due to the lack of possible reinvestment opportunities. 

With the new proposal approved, ASWU President Stevie Bergstrom (’26) explained the next steps towards full endowment management. She is currently in communication with Anne Gallagher, the vice president of finance and chief financial officer, to submit a formal request to divest under the senate-approved proposal. Gallagher will then act as a liaison between ASWU and the board of trustees's endowment committee. The endowment committee is a subcommittee of the board that is responsible for oversight of the endowment and will review ASWU’s proposal.

The board of trustees’s next general and subcommittee meetings are to be held in late October. This is a developing story. The Collegian will continue to report on this as more information becomes available.