Lakehead University should drill for oil on campus.
At least that's one tongue-in-cheek idea being floated by a group of students called Fossil Free Lakehead, part of an international campus movement to get schools to divest funds from big oil and put that money towards green-economy corporations with a social conscience.
The group even had a make-shift fracking rig set up in the Agora Tuesday morning and handed out "free fracking fluid", which was actually coffee but definitely made students turn their heads on the way to class.
"We're calling it fossil fools day," member Natalie Gerum said. "Canada is becoming a fossil fool on the international scene in terms of its inaction on climate change and its insistence on expanding the tar sands."
The group is asking the Lakehead Board of Governors to stop investing in the energy sector. University students are taught to think critically and engage in social issues. The school itself should do the same. Gerum said it's disaster capitalism.
"We don't think it's right to profit from climate change and the climate crisis," she said.
If not, then the school should explore other options.
"Let's just drill right here at Lakehead," Gerum joked.
