My name is Thomas Dorrington, an alumnus of Gonville & Caius College, and on Friday 28th August at 4:05pm I was arrested outside the college on suspicion of having caused criminal damage. After being held for 23 hours and 30 minutes, I was granted bail, subject to the condition that I do not enter or go within 100 metres of the college I once studied at, along with the majority of other colleges in central Cambridge.
I studied Computer Science at Gonville & Caius, before graduating in 2017. After a short break from academia, I returned in 2018 to start an MPhil at the Department of Computer Science and Technology. Unfortunately, very shortly into the course of my postgraduate studies, I became extremely ill and have since been diagnosed with Lyme Disease - a chronically debilitating illness with neurological symptoms that prevented any future career in academia, which was a lifelong ambition of mine.
Consistently you told me of the bright future I had ahead of me, and the positive impacts I would be making in the world after I graduated. But you lied to me. You lied to me as a prospective student; you lied to me as a current student; and you lied to me as an alumnus. Because that future does not exist.
Right now as you read this email, catastrophic climate and ecological breakdown is taking place, with effects being seen all over the world, especially in the Global South. One third of Bangladesh is currently under water, with millions of people displaced; Karachi in Pakistan has experienced the worst floods since records began and dozens have died as a result; wildfires are ravaging the west coast of the USA, while record-setting hurricanes batter the Gulf; hundreds of billions of locusts are swarming through East Africa in the worst infestation for a quarter of a century, threatening crops and bringing famine; and the last fully intact ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic has collapsed.
To top it off, we cannot forget how a global pandemic, which has already killed hundreds of thousands, was made much more likely by rampant deforestation, intensive animal farming, and our dysfunctional and destructive relationship with nature. In fact, the increasing prevalence of vector-borne diseases, particularly the Lyme Disease I am afflicted with, has a very strong correlation with an overheating climate.
These are the effects being seen at ‘just’ 1.2C of warming. Very recently, the UK government’s own climate advisers said the UK should be preparing for ‘a minimum 2C world’ with ‘consideration for 4C’: a temperature incompatible with human civilization. We are heading for societal collapse.
Yet Gonville & Caius College, the college I was once so proud to have been accepted into, and one of the wealthiest Cambridge colleges, still invests in fossil fuels - the primary industry responsible for worldwide environmental destruction and the genocide of indigenous communities.
Caius may not hold direct investments in fossil fuels, but this is because they hold no direct investments at all, not because of a moral decision. Worse, the college hasn’t committed to keep this position - they have refused to rule out investing in fossil fuels directly in the future. In the absence of such a commitment, I can only conclude the college would invest again in fossil fuels if it became financially beneficial to them.
Currently, the college holds indirect investments, and while some “[have] disposed of [their] remaining interests in extractive fossil fuel companies”, there is no mention of the non-extractive fossil fuel industry - fossil fuel refinement, marketing, transporting, or technology and research. They also retain “maturing private equity funds which were established to have an emphasis on the oil industry”, for which “the timescale for disposal of the residual interests cannot be predicted”.
These are nebulous words. If Gonville & Caius is serious about the future of its students, it must clearly state that it commits to never hold direct investments in any fossil fuel company again, and that it will similarly divest all its indirect investments that include any kind of fossil fuel company. It must also declare full divestment from arms (the biggest consumer of fossil fuels worldwide), intensive animal farming (as destructive and immoral an industry as fossil fuels), and any kind of biodiversity destruction.
As long as you continue to invest in and provide social legitimacy to these industries, while continuing to promise your students a bright future, you are lying to them. As you have done to me.
Thomas Dorrington B.A. (Hons)
Extinction Rebellion Cambridge Youth
Note: This letter was emailed by Tom to Gonville & Caius College's Master, Bursar, Development Office and Senior Tutor on Monday 31st August 2020.