In the 2024 Student Government Association (SGA) elections, a referendum question asked University of Massachusetts students if they supported divestment from military and defense organizations, 73.1 percent of voters said yes.
The referendum reads: “Are you in support of UMass Amherst’s divestment, meaning the complete cessation of special and exclusive financial relationships in the defense industry from defense companies and military contractors?”
2,725 students voted and 1,992 of them said they were in support of divestment from companies like Raytheon Technologies, DCS Corporation, General Dynamics and others in similar fields.
Anthony Passariello, a junior electrical engineering major, works for a company listed on the referendum question. Passariello is “not surprised at all” by the results.
“I know that outside of the engineering program… the attitude on campus is very against the defense industry. I understand it, though I don’t personally agree with it,” he said.
Sydney Malen, an industrial engineering major, said, “I feel like with everything going on right now…. especially with the protests, I feel like [divestment] is in everybody’s mind.”
Multiple protests and the recent encampment on the campus lawn have demanded the University to cut its’ ties with defense companies, specifically those contributing to the Israel-Gaza conflict.
SGA Student Trustee Chris Brady, an economics and political science major, put the question on the ballot.
“My motivation was, as a student representative, to put the resolution on to identify what is the student appetite for divestment,” Brady said, adding that he wanted to “try to gauge how important this is to the student body.”
“I don’t think anyone expected divestment to win with 73 percent support, especially with over 2,000 students participating in the SGA elections,” he said. Around 700 more people voted in referendums in the 2024 election than in the 2023 election.
“For the general campus, I can absolutely believe [the results],” Anna LaChance, a chemical engineering lecturer, said.
LaChance said that in terms of engineering students, there are “definitely a lot of more radical students, and I’m very thrilled to see that, I just don’t know, I think a lot of engineers try to stay apolitical and neutral.”
Passariello added, “The engineering program is not as black and white on the issue as people on campus might think, there’s definitely a huge diversity of views towards the defense industry.”
LaChance noted that the College of Engineering gets research funding from its relationship with defense companies, in addition to the recruiting opportunities.
The Daily Hampshire Gazette filed public records requests for the projects between Raytheon and UMass. They found that “the University turned over 11 heavily redacted Raytheon purchase orders representing almost $1.5 million in projects. In all 11 documents, entire pages about the proposed work are blacked out.”
“There are plenty of faculty in the College of Engineering who do research that’s funded by the Department of Defense,” LaChance said. “Even if you managed to successfully convince every single person to divest, it’s a matter of [them finding] alternative grant sources.”
Many of these companies have exclusive opportunities for them to network with students. LaChance said it is like a tier system — the companies that provide more funding to UMass get more access to students.
“They not only get to be at the career fair, but they get this exclusive access, and they get to do seminars on campus and interviews with students,” LaChance continued. “The ties run deep, and it’s not just Raytheon, obviously; it’s also Pratt and Whitney and all these other contractors.”
Passariello has no personal qualms about working in defense, saying “Ironically, one of the things I liked about the [engineering] program was the close ties with some companies like Raytheon.”
At a Raytheon/Pratt and Whitney networking event, the UMass Dissenters interrupted and began a demonstration, attempting to teach engineering students about the disadvantages of working for Raytheon. During the demonstration, the Dean of the College of Engineering Sanjay Raman showed respect for Raytheon and thanked the two speakers for attending and connecting with students.
“If you’ve got students in the engineering department who are interested in working for these companies, they’re still going to go apply to them. They’re still going to go get jobs in the fields they want to get jobs in. All you’re doing is taking away opportunities for them,” Passariello said.
In 2023, RTX (formerly Raytheon Technologies) was reported as one of the highest employers of bachelor’s degree recipients from UMass.
“The nature of divestment is about what the University chooses to elevate. What industries are we choosing to treat preferentially? And perhaps, looking critically at what has been described as a funnel, where [are] engineering students [being] funneled into the defense industry?” Brady added.
“It’s a moral issue, it’s an ethical issue. I don’t want UMass to be ethically compromised because that means their students are ethically compromised,” LaChance said.
She continued, “I think [the engineering department] definitely needs to take ethics more seriously.”
“It’s a relationship and a money thing,” Malen added, “ethics or not.”
Brady pointed out that students “are entirely cognizant” of the companies they are choosing to work for, specifically in majors like engineering.
Passarillo has conversed with friends in the engineering program who disagree heavily with his connections to defense contractors. While others agree the paycheck is worth it, he believes that the College overall is “very, very mixed, it’s a very broad spectrum.”
“We should be training our engineers to be more ethical and to consider types of engineering that are beyond the goals of capitalism and colonialism,” LaChance said.
Passariello and Malen echoed the idea that while the referendum seems like a step forward, it might miss the point and hurt some students.
“I think that the referendum is probably going about the problem in the wrong way. I understand the intention and even respect the motives of the people doing it. It’s just, I don’t think it’s the correct way to address the problem,” Passariello said.
Malen said, “from a student perspective, I feel like the energy is better spent elsewhere.” She added that “we need to look inwards at our government,” to understand who is “really doing the damage.”
“All [divestment] does is narrow the already small pool of available internships for those students, whether they plan to work in an industry or not,” Passariello said.
LaChance believes divestment is a topic many university administrators will not accept, saying that “their pockets will always be with running the University as a business.”
“[Divestment] is logistically complicated. It’s like a year-long project, and students need to understand that, and faculty need to come and be like, ‘Okay, this is the reality of the situation. Let’s figure it out and like make a plan for that,’” LaChance said.
While efforts have been made to arrange talks around divestment, the University has continued its relationship with defense contractors.
“In my time on this campus, I know every year there’s a huge push to get those companies removed, and then the University appears to bend, and then every year the companies are back anyway,” Passariello said.
On May 6, SGA passed motion 2024-S64, a “Resolution to Boycott Divest & Sanction and Drop the Charges on the UMass 57,” which called for an explicit split from UMass and other defense companies.
“The role of SGA is to represent students to the University, and there’s been all this activism, agitation, and discourse surrounding UMass’ specific and preferential financial connections to war profiteers,” Brady said.
Alexandra Hill can be reached at [email protected].
