Martha Mitchell, HSU President 2024/25 (previously SSA College Officer), has passed a policy through Union Council to support People & Planet's Fossil Free Careers campaign.

This campaigns calls for Sheffield Hallam University's Careers department to:

• Refuse all new relationships with oil, gas, or mining companies
• Decline to renew any current relationships with oil, gas, or mining companies after the contractually obligated period ends
• Adopt a publicly available Ethical Careers Policy that explicitly excludes oil, gas, and mining companies from recruitment opportunities

Oil, gas, and mining industries cause immense environmental and social harm. Their operations are accelerating the ecological emergency, wrecking the climate, polluting water, and permanently destroying landscapes. They are displacing people from their homes and lands, destroying livelihoods, demolishing sacred indigenous sites, and leaving workers and communities with severe health problems.

There is no future for jobs in these industries: they are dead end jobs for students and graduates. Even the most conservative science states we need to dramatically scale down resource extraction if we are to avoid the worst impacts of the climate and ecological crisis.

We believe Hallam's Careers department needs to stop putting new workers into oil, gas, and mining industries and take responsibility for building the sustainable, ethical workforce we need to transition to a just and equitable energy system and low carbon economy.

This campaign does not stop students from having a career in these industries, it purely stops these careers being advertised at Hallam.