President McPherson proposed three potential divestment strategies to the board of trustees, grounded in corporate responsibility but also informed by student protesters and the facts and opinions of the peace missionaries.

1. Full divestment as a symbol of solidarity.
2. Divest from companies not committed to confronting apartheid, fully divest in December 1986 if apartheid continued.
3. Strategic divestment using Sullivan principles. The college would write to corporations they held stock in with poor ratings and divest based on their responses.

The Board of Trustees ended up going with the most moderate response, an adaptation of option 3, which recognized the shortcomings of the Sullivan Principles. They wanted to see corporations actively advocate the government of South Africa to end Apartheid.¹ They finally divested from 5 corporations who did not write back to their inquiry about the company’s commitment to ending apartheid. They sold $651,558 of stock in Air Products, American Brands, Ashland Oil, Crown Cork and Seal, and Goodyear Tire. Bryn Mawr kept stock in the 16 companies who wrote letters expressing their commitment to a non racial society. This is indicative of Bryn Mawr’s corporate reform strategy which believed companies could be forces to effect nonviolent change.

Bryn Mawr remained invested in about 16 corporations: Burroughs, Caterpillar, Chase Manhattan, Chevron, Cigna, Citicorp, Coca Cola, Cooper Industries, Dow Chemical, Eastman Kodak, General Motors, Honeywell, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Minnesota Mining, and R.J. Reynolds.

The Board would forward political action outside the arena of its investments through “[inviting] interested members of the Bryn Mawr College community to join with it in an organized effort of this and other colleges and universities to urge Congress and the President to take leadership with regard to South African affairs much as they have recently managed in Haiti and the Philippines.”³ They also committed to “giving financial aid to South African students, forming a committee which will deal with constructive proposals from students and meeting with other colleges to draw up proposals about timeliness for divestment.”⁴

Bryn Mawr’s divestment strategy held out hope that corporations, who wrote they were committed to ending Apartheid, would make do on their promises. This disregarded student’s concerns about the ethics of profiting from a country with fundamental human rights abuses. This reformist position was in line with the college’s neoliberal ethos. President Mary Patterson McPherson was interviewed in a June 1986 Newsweek article titled “Divisions over Divestment: Balancing social conscience with fiscal prudence.” She spoke about the difficulties divesting at a small college like Bryn Mawr as opposed to a larger institution, stating that “each institution would suffer proportionally.” The article details the financial costs of divestment, including fees on liquidating stocks and the “opportunity costs” of limiting investment opportunities.⁵ This position dismissed student activists’ contestation of the premise that any financial engagement in South Africa was complacent in maintaining Apartheid.

Following the 1986 day of actions, Binafer Nowrojee firmly told the New York Times, ”we will not rest until we have full divestment.”⁶ In the fall semester following the spring protests, Bryn Mawr Coalition for Divestment leader Diba Siddiqi wrote, “Bryn Mawr’s imminent divestment is by no means a signal for sitting back complacently. Apartheid still kills. South Africans still have urgent stories to tell.”⁷ Siddiqi called on her peers to not to accept a partial divestment and fall victim to being sedated by the college’s prescription of corporate responsibility.

1. HCV PRESIDENT’S PAPERS ROBERT B STEVENS 1985-1986 B-Commonwealth Box 16. Folder: Bryn Mawr-South Africa. Mary Patterson McPherson “Report on Investment Responsibility and Our Recommendations”.
2. MARY PATTERSON MCPHERSON PAPERS. Correspondence, Subjects 9/10, Se-Sw. Special Collections Dept., Bryn Mawr College Library Box 59 of 82. Folder: South African 1984-88; STUDENTS BOX LISTS 9I ISSUES ON CAMPUS/STUDENT ACTIVISM. Folder: Divestment S. Africa.
3. Patterson Papers IBID.
4. Bryn Mawr College Publications, Special Collections, Digitized Books. The College News. 1986-10-8 Vol. 8 No. 2 Students of Bryn Mawr College.
5. STUDENTS BOX LISTS 9I ISSUES ON CAMPUS/STUDENT ACTIVISM. Folder: Divestment S. Africa.
6. AP. SWARTHMORE TO SELL STOCKS LINKED TO SOUTH AFRICA. New York Times. March 2, 1986, Section 1, Page 23.https://www.nytimes.com/1986/03/02/us/swarthmore-to-sell-stocks-linked-to-south-africa.html
7. 45 Bryn Mawr College News 1986 Bryn Mawr College Publications, Special Collections, Digitized Books. The College News 1986-10-8 Vol. 8 No. 2. Students of Bryn Mawr College.