Harvard Divestment Activists Pour Molasses on Themselves to Symbolize an Oil Spill

This is one of those instances where the protest is really performance art and the spectacle matters more than the issue.

The College Fix reports:

Harvard fossil fuel divestment group stages mock oil spill on campusIn a bid to convince the university to divest its holdings in fossil fuels, activists at Harvard on Friday staged a mock oil spill on the campus, pouring molasses over their heads in order to simulate an environmentally devastating oil disaster.The Harvard Crimson reports that three students—a freshman, a sophomore and a junior—all “sat on white sheets while three other Divest Harvard members, wearing placards bearing the names of oil companies, drenched them with a thick, brown liquid meant to symbolize oil.”According to The Crimson, one attendee, named Miles Mcallister, said the demonstration was “amazing…really cool and special and powerful.”Divestment has historically been a losing issue at Harvard. The school has refused to divest its fossil fuel holdings in spite of sustained protests on its campus. A petition that circulated last year calling for divestment snagged a vanishingly small number of signatures from the student body. A year ago, not even 10 percent of student voters wanted to see a fossil fuel divestment referendum on the ballot; the student government was forced to vote the referendum through on its own.

Tags: College Insurrection, Harvard

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