Although the Washington University Investor Responsibility Advisory Committee (WUIRAC) was endowed with a formal charter in March, its two faculty positions and one of two administrator positions have yet to be filled.

The group is able to cast proxy votes on resolutions for the University’s investments.

Proxy votes are a way for shareholders to vote on company issues, which sometimes deal with social, environmental or governance concerns, without physically attending meetings.

The group will be made up of six undergraduate and three graduate students, as well as two faculty members and two administrators.

The student representation of the committee has been finalized and currently has representatives from every college except the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.

According to senior Molly Gott, a member of WUIRAC, the student members of the committee are principally in charge of conducting research to inform proxy voting, and faculty and administrator members will provide their expertise.

Phil Valko, head of the Office of Sustainability, is currently the only administrator representative who has committed to serving on the committee, and the two faculty representative spots remain to be filled.

Valko hopes that service on the committee will be a learning experience for both himself and the other committee members.

“I know very little about responsible investing at this point. First and foremost, I hope to get out of IRAC a shared process of learning about the opportunities, if there are opportunities, for investing even more responsibly than we are currently investing while still being good stewards of the endowment,” he said. “In particular, I am interested in exploring if there are opportunities to advance the University’s goals of environmental sustainability.”

The idea for WUIRAC developed about two years ago out of the Washington University Peace Coalition, which was trying to look into whether the University was investing in things like weapons manufacturing. Realizing how difficult it was to find information about the University’s investments, the group began to campaign for further endowment transparency.

Then the coalition began to expand its focus.

“We realized transparency was only really one narrow part of this whole issue of responsible investment, integrating environmental, social and governance issues into investment and what really constitutes a sustainable and responsible endowment,” Gott said.

The group is working to ensure that the University is only investing in companies whose policies reflect the school’s stance on particular issues, such as anti-discrimination.

“If it’s a policy that Wash. U. has…we should hold the companies that we’re investing in accountable to those same policies,” Gott said.

The University had previously forgone the privilege of using its proxy votes.

“Before the committee was set up, Washington University was not voting any of their proxies, and they didn’t have any guidelines about them. So this year, the first task is to establish consensus issues within the Wash. U. community, and start voting those proxies,” Gott said.

Each of the representatives on the new committee will have an equal proxy vote.

According to Gott, “consensus issues” within the student body might include things like sustainability reporting. The committee hopes to determine the most important issues to the student body at large by means of a Student Union survey.

“It’s kind of a way to harness the power of the school as an investor without having to sell stocks…It can be a really powerful way to incite change in corporations, kind of from the inside,” Gott said. “I think one thing that’s really exciting and kind of compelling is that because money touches everything, you can hopefully have influence over a wide variety of issues that really touch a lot of different groups.”

Valko, while similarly optimistic, acknowledged the limitations that he and the committee will face in dealing with the University’s endowment.

“This is an issue that should be approached very sensitively. The endowment allows us all to be here and have access to the resources to learn and research at a world-class institution. There are going to be limitations on what we can and cannot do,” he said.

The committee also hopes to form thematic subcommittees to allow students interested in specific issues such as climate justice or supply chain management to do research on those topics to report back to the committee.

Open town hall meetings will also be held regularly for any students to attend and ask questions or provide input, members of WUIRAC said.

Currently, the group is putting most of its efforts into increasing investment transparency.

“We don’t have that much information right now. Once we dive into more of the actual holdings of the endowment or proxy voting, then we’ll get a better picture of what we should be focusing on. Right now, our first step is to get the transparency,” said WUIRAC member Zac Friss.

Gott added that the group’s ultimate goal is to hold the endowment to the University’s ethical standard.

“As a charter…the committee’s mission is to evaluate the ethical impact of the University’s endowment and make sure it’s in line with the school’s mission statement. One of the major things…is this pledge to be a leader in its home community of St. Louis and the world at large, and we feel like the committee’s role is really to hold the endowment to that standard as well,” she said.

The committee hopes to involve the student body in its efforts.

WUIRAC is seeking to hold the University accountable for responsible investment of its endowment funds. It aims to increase the school’s endowment transparency and engage students in a dialogue about the University’s investments.