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Students will mail letters today to the University of California president and treasurer asking them to investigate the university’s financial holdings and relinquish stocks held in companies that do business in Sudan, if such investment is revealed in their investigation.

Those participating in this week’s letter-writing campaign, organized by the Darfur Action Committee, are concerned with the systematic killings of Sudanese in the country’s Darfur region, and believe that divestment can be an effective tool in persuading the country’s government to change its policies, said Bridget Smith, a fourth-year international development studies student.

The crisis in Darfur, considered a genocide by the U.S. Congress, has raised international criticism of the Sudanese government, which many reports consider complicit in the killings of civilians in the region.

Adam Rosenthal, a second-year law student at UC Davis and the student regent designate for the UC Board of Regents, said it is important to know if the university holds investments in Sudan.

“We have a responsibility that at least our books are clean of (the Sudanese government’s) horrific policies,” he said.

Last week, Rosenthal wrote letters to the UC Treasurer David Russ and President Robert Dynes and the members of the investments committee on the UC Board of Regents requesting a report of the multinational corporations in which the UC invests and which do business with the government in Sudan. Should such investment exist, he also asked that the treasurer recommend to the regents that they divest from some or all of these corporations.

But Rosenthal said he understands such an investigation is no easy task.

Divestment is also a difficult policy for the UC to adopt because the university does not invest in companies individually, but rather holds stocks in an index fund comprised of a broad range of companies determined automatically by their size and nature in the market, said Trey Davis, a spokesman for the UC Office of the President.

“It’s difficult to remove certain companies from an index without destroying the financial rationale for the index,” he said.

Earlier this month, Harvard University announced its decision to divest financial holdings amounting to $4.4 million in PetroChina Company Limited because of the company’s ties to the government in Sudan.

“This decision reflects deep concerns about the grievous crisis that persists in the Darfur region of Sudan, and about the extensive role of PetroChina’s closely affiliated parent company, China National Petroleum Corporation, as a leading partner of the Sudanese government in the production of oil in Sudan,” said the university’s Corporation Committee on Shareholder Responsibility in a statement. The committee recommended to the university that it divest its holdings.

Edmond Keller, a UCLA political science professor, said he expects other universities will also divest, creating a “domino effect.”

If the divestment campaign is widespread internationally it can cause significant changes in Sudan, Keller said.

Allowing more peacekeeping forces to protect citizens in Sudan would be one significant goal that divestment efforts can potentially realize, he added.

In 1985 Keller served on a UC committee that recommended the system respond to the apartheid in South Africa by divesting some of its holdings in companies that operated in the country.

This week’s letter writing efforts are part of an ongoing campaign by the Darfur Action Committee to spread information on the crisis in Darfur and to call on officials to make changes.

In previous weeks, students have addressed letters to California senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, and their respective representatives asking them to sign on to the Darfur Accountability Act, which will increase diplomatic pressures on the Bush administration to address the crisis in Darfur.

Both senators and Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., have co-signed the legislation, though there is no indication that efforts made by student groups prompted them to do so.