CSUN Student Senate to Pull B of A Funds in Apartheid Protest

The California State University, Northridge student government voted Tuesday to remove its funds from Bank of America to protest the bank’s financial dealings with South Africa.

The student senate unanimously approved shifting the $125,000 in the student government bank accounts to Imperial Bank, which student leaders said has no ties with South Africa.

The vote represented the first success of Students Against Apartheid, a recently formed campus group. Group members said that in coming months they are planning to petition two other campus organizations, the University Student Union and the CSUN Foundation, to similarly break ties with the bank and firms that do business in South Africa.

Apaptheid Criticized

White-dominated South Africa frequently has come under fire from American student organizations for the practice of apartheid, the government-enforced segregation of non-whites, who account for about 85% of that nation’s population.

Several other student governments in California, including UCLA’s, have recently pulled their funds from Bank of America, to protest loans the bank has made to South African companies.

A Bank of America spokesman declined to comment on the Northridge student government action. The spokesman cited a bank policy statement that condemns apartheid but argues that it is “improper as well as ineffective for a private financial institution to seek to impose its own political and social preferences on host countries.”

Trustees of the nine-campus University of California and the 19-campus California State University also are under pressure to sell all stock in firms that do business in South Africa.

Both systems are studying the effects of divestment. Trustees of both systems have said they are concerned that the forced sale of millions of dollars worth of stock in such firms as Motorola Inc., IBM Corp. and Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co. could harm the financial stability of employee pension funds.

But Frank Lorah, general manager of Associated Students Inc., the corporate name of the Cal State Northridge student government, said the shift to Imperial Bank would be almost painless for the organization. It would cost $1,155, the price of printing new checks, he said.

South Africa Investments to End

The resolution approved by the student government said that no student funds will be “invested in any bank or financial institution . . . which makes loans to the government of South Africa, national corporations of South Africa or to a subsidiary or affiliate of a United States company operating in South Africa.”