evergreen state college protest leaders evergreen state college protest leaders

I think if that's the only thing you ever see about this event or about anything that's happened at Evergreen, then I can definitely see how people are like, "Oh, these are just privileged, spoiled kids, who are, like, crying racism whenever they get the first chance." I am currently a third-year student at the University College Maastricht studying psychology and Neuropsychology. Some faculty members said they felt Weinsteins actions were racist, and that his appearance on conservative-news outlets brought unwanted attention to the campus. Alleged biased treatment by the campus police seemed to be another sore point. February 22, 2018. The protesters organ-ized a boycott of the meeting, sending out a press release stating: "We have already voiced our experiences over this year and Wendy and George have made it obvious they don't care about how recent events are affecting the student body. If youre not paying me cash money, working on an impeachment plan, or burning a cop shop to the ground, we dont have much to say to each other, according to faculty member Bret Weinsteins tort claim filed this summer against Evergreen. You said racist s! When the cops arrived, student protesters formed a protective ring around the students of color conversing with Weinstein, the Cooper Point Journal reported. Yes, Im on my way to Evergreen University now with a .44 Magnum, the caller said. I thought it was very ironic that the people who were telling me that they wanted to give a platform for minorities to speak weren't listening to mine. . Although the Evergreen faculty never adopted or took any other action on the Equity and Inclusion Council's report, some of the council's members, impatient at the professors' inaction, seemed to be quietly incorporating its recommendations into campus life at Evergreenwhile Bridges began a search for what seemed to be exactly the plenipotentiary "Vice President/Vice Provost for Equity and Inclusion" that the council had recommended. Two weeks later, a Portland-based right wing activist group held a "free speech" rally at Evergreen. The annual Day of Absence at Evergreen State College took place for years without much notice outside the campus. Police Chief Brown was asked by protesters to attend without weapons, and Bridges told her to adhere to that request. Evergreen undergraduates, who make up the vast majority of its students, instead sign up for year-long, multi-credit, interdisciplinary programs that typically include a range of hard-science, social-science, and humanities fields. The students who are in the most danger in the current climate and culture of both the Evergreen campus and the United States do not view Seabert Olsen as a safe person to seek help from. Shes no longer serving as the student conduct officer, a position shes held for many years. She said it was the day after violent protests erupted in Charlotte, North Carolina, following a police shooting. According to school data, 29% of the student body is not white. Founded in 1967, it offers a non-traditional undergraduate curriculum in which students have the option to design their own study towards a degree or follow a pre-determined path of study. It was really scary. They barricaded campus spaces, wrangled with campus police, and stormed the president's office. If one spoke in a way that challenged the narrative that was being advanced, then one was portrayed as in particular, racist. And more free food, after the meeting adjourned at 6 p.m. Racist graffiti appeared on and off campus. But those are people who seem to view anyone who disagrees with them as a white supremacist. Real-time updates and all local stories you want right in the palm of your hand. You have that? We should all focus more towards the message. If you need to flag this entry as abusive. Students take over a conversation with the first of three job candidates for the vice president of equity position, and talk about recent events and history of racism on campus. Weinstein and Heying filed a lawsuit against the college and received a 500-thousand-dollar settlement in September. Those protests apparently stemmed from minority students' long-simmering dissatisfaction with the way they believed Evergreen was treating themdissatisfaction that stretched back even to the African-American Purce's presidency. Ivette holds a Masters degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where she specialized in broadcast journalism. Near the end of the semester, Evergreen was closed for three days because of threats from people who were opposed to the student protests, and officials elected to move its graduation ceremony off campus. The school's motto isno jokeOmnia Extares: Let it all hang out. But there was a big public backlash, including from the liberal left, and it died down for a decade. Protesters use furniture to barricade the main entrance of the library building, announces that he will introduce a bill to privatize Evergreen. The campus remained closed on June 2, reopened for weekend classes and was closed again on June 5 because of an additional, non-specific threat. Believe it or not it was far crazier than the video you just showed. Evergreen's commencement speaker in 1999 was Mumia Abu-Jamal, convicted in 1982 of murdering a Philadelphia police officer. A student aggressively approached and took the mic away from Wendy Endress, the vice president of student affairs. In 2010, she co-produced a documentary series on New Yorks baseball history that aired on Channel Thirteen. Now he was being accused of racism. A male student standing behind Bridges informed him that if he didn't respond to the occupying students' list by 5 p.m. that Friday, May 26, "you need to pay for a potluck.". That email was circulated widely and fueled attacks that led to the charge that he was a racist. Evergreen State is already having trouble attracting studentsand it might take a lesson from the University of Missouri, which is shutting down dorms and laying off staff in the wake of a 23 percent freshman enrollment decline after widely publicized student-protest belligerence in 2015. About 25 students stand to the side of the podium with their fists raised during a ceremony to dedicate a $12.75 million remodeled building after former Evergreen president Les Purce. Lawmakers in Washington State are looking to strip funds from Evergreen State College in the wake of chaotic, radical protests and a threat that shut down the campus on Thursday. It's difficult all the time to kind of navigate your way around institutions that are not created for you. But others say the riot only reinforces the need for tight campus security. Understanding the Events of the Spring of 2017 at The Evergreen State College: The student protests and unrest that took place in the Spring of 2017 at Evergreen must be understood in at least two different contexts: First, as a particular expression of an unprecedented national student movement of unrest The videos, made on the phones of Evergreen State students, were ubiquitous as the activities of the 200 or so protesters culminated in a literal shutdown of the college (Evergreen State suspended operations from the afternoon of June 1 to the afternoon of June 5, even though it had been scheduled to hold the last of its spring-term classes on those days, after someone made a 911 call threatening to shoot up the campus with a .44 Magnum). The Evergreen State College closed again Monday, the second time in days that security concerns led college officials to shut down a campus that has gotten national attention after protests over race. I. "Made by my mama!" Subconsciouslyor perhaps archetypally, since none was alive when Deliverance was ringing up the cash registers during the early 1970sthe Evergreen protesters similarly seemed to smell blood with the eager-to-please and ultimately hapless Bridges. Many of the nontraditional colleges, including Evergreen, quickly became known as "hippie colleges" because they tended, as they still do, to attract a distinctly nontraditional student body. The most important question, it seems to me, is whether or not the learning environment for students has improved at Evergreen because of what transpired last spring and the aftermath this summer. Some Evergreen faculty members and students say his appearance fueled attacks on the campus from the alt-right. He had objected to a college-sponsored Day of Absence on April 10, when white students, faculty, and staff had been encouraged to make themselves scarce on campus. Student activists like Juan Carlos Ruiz-Duran believe racial tensions started well before last spring. It hardly mattered that the Pacific Northwest is overwhelmingly Nordic, thanks to massive Scandinavian immigration around the turn of the 20th century, and that a slight overrepresentation of white students on a state-school campus might therefore be expected. About 30-40 students remained after the event and used the sound equipment to engage with each other, college officials say. Basically we were forced to leave our classroom because of the protest.. One Evergreen student told Olympian columnist Matt Driscoll: "There has been meeting after meeting with the administration. Evergreen senior Sarah-Grace Vasquez, 39, described it as a Black Lives Matter event and a beautiful, silent protest.. But the Evergreen students captured in the May 23 video were having nothing to do with Weinstein's attempts to lift the conversation to a high-minded, fancy-word "dialectic" plane: "This is not a discussionyou lost that one! Andre Thompson and Bryson Chaplin, two brothers had been shot by an Olympia Police officer in 2015 during an altercation, are found guilty on lesser assault charges in the high-profile case. I, at least, have been going through a mixture of feeling betrayed feeling angry. Black trans disabled students are actively being sought out and confronted by campus police constantly, police are refusing to explain their actions and harassment. Still, before Bridges arrived on the Evergreen campus, a highly popular African American, Thomas. He argued that the equality of outcomes that the council was pushing was a "discredited concept, failing on both logical and historical grounds," as he put it in a May 30 op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. Ho ho! The students were adjudicated using the student-conduct code during spring and summer quarters, she said. The school board rejected some proposed cuts last week. A T-shirted student stood up holding a plastic-cup drink and waved her hand sarcastically: "People of color have to work in threatening environments every day! The Debrief with Tim Carney: Who will take the blame for all the COVID lockdowns? What followed was Evergreen-predictable. A meeting took place in the campus's Longhouse, a handsome wooden "cultural center" surrounded by forest and bedecked with indigenous art that is Evergreen's nod to the days when cis-het white menand any other white peoplewere unknown in the Puget Sound region. Weinstein is in the crowd. Founder and Executive Director, The Clergy Letter Project. "This is about THEIR needs!" Campus staff puts up signs closing The Evergreen State College campus in Olympia after a threat prompted a student alert and evacuation on Thursday, June 1, 2017. A video posted on YouTube and elsewhere that seems to have been made at 3:40 p.m. on May 23hours after Weinstein's class had been invadedshows an enraged Naima Lowe, a black professor of film studies and a member of the Equity and Inclusion Council, hurling F-bombs, defending the protesters, and telling some puzzled-looking white faculty members huddling outside the library that the campus unrest was their own fault for ignoring the council's recommendations. Bret went onto Fox News, and the world empathized with him, said Evergreen student Rachel Plentywolf. The college has hired a Vice President and Vice Provost for Equity and Inclusion to do just that It is also implementing the Equity Plan, which, among other things, includes new trainings for staff to better support undocumented students. Having lived in several different countries has helped me develop excellent social skills. They explained that we are trying to give voice to those who don't have a voice. Seabert Olsen has shown a consistent often violent flaw in judgment when it pertains to the needs and safety of Black students, other students of color, Trans students, students with disabilities, students who have experienced sexual assault. The two students were investigated and possibly disciplined. Now the College Is Under Siege. The college's likely most famous nongraduate was Rachel Corrie, accidentally bulldozed to death in 2003 in an Israeli military operation in Gaza during the Second Intifada. The closure was The Olympian's . We've been grieving. Browns children and family were escorted from the area because of concerns for safety and an interest in preventing further presence in the situation, officials wrote. When I voiced concern over the effect they were gonna have on the college there was a tremendous backlash that accused me of opposing the proposals because I opposed equity itself. Bret Weinstein and his wife, Heather. Sharon Goodman, Evergreen's director of residential and dining services, felt obliged to send around a memo on June 4 reminding the bat brigade that "the use of bats or similar instruments is not productive.". Nonetheless, the demographic statistics at Evergreen have been just divergent enough from those of the U.S. population as a whole63 percent white, 13 percent black, and 17 percent Hispanic (only 10 percent of Evergreen's students are Hispanics of all races, according to Education Department criteria)to trigger the formation of a campus faculty-staff group that titled itself the "Equity and Inclusion Council." Apologies to the Native Americans whose "land was stolen and on which the college stands"? Consider: Faculty and administrators have to compete with one another for power, prestige, status, and money. Even perennial ultra-liberals such as New York Times columnist Frank Bruni and Huffington Post contributor Matt Teitelbaum have been shocked at the spectacle of a professor held prisoner by students at his own college and taunted for racism for disagreeing with faculty colleagues. About 29 percent of Evergreen students describe themselves as "students of color." In the past, administrators were there to serve the faculty and students. About 120 incident reports involving 180 students were filed during the campus unrest, college spokeswoman Sandra Kaiser told The Olympian. . Their greeting, also captured in a video, had been: "F you, George, we don't want to hear a God-damned thing you have to say." The 66-year-old Bridges, balding, pudgy, bespectacled, and given to sporting bow ties on dressy occasions, had the misfortune of visually calling to mind Bobby Trippe, the adipose city slicker raped by hillbillies in John Boorman's 1972 backwoods horror flick Deliverance. ", "It's the first thing I'll do. Jeers and general derision followed, as Bridges tried to shush them with his free hand and make himself heard. Campus police detain two students after a week of escalating Internet conversations. creative thinkers and future leaders who study at Evergreen," he said. I have not done it yet, I will do it right now. . The Cooper Point Journal said the students sent out a news release stating: We have already voiced our experiences over this year and Wendy (Endress) and George (Bridges) have made it obvious they dont care about how recent events are affecting the student body. This video was excised from YouTube for violating the site's "harassment and bullying" policy after protesters complained it had been selectively edited to make them look like harassers and bullies. Bridges was amenable to that order, too: "We'll be paying for a potluck anyway," he replied. class kills 16-year-old, Washington school says, Arts Walk returns with a flourish as Luminary Procession takes to the streets, Whats happening this week around Thurston County, Lacey Elementary would add 100 students under proposed boundary change, district says, Tukwila superintendent appointed to top job at Capital Region ESD 113, North Thurstons Deb Clemens is a finalist for top job at Capital Region ESD 113, Olympia school closures off the table for now as district cuts budget deficit to $10.5 million, Evergreen board accepts $2 million in gifts as it hears mostly positive news about the college, WA only has two Women in STEM chapters. Check. That night, Evergreen faculty member Naima Lowe posted on Facebook: To my white friends: Youre on notice. Labelling virtually everyone as a white supremacist trivializes the concept and emboldens those who are the embodiment of white supremacy. . But what those clips leave out is the fact that those students for years had been going about things the, you know, quote unquote "right way." And I absolutely wish it had not happened. Jamil's post called for "PoC" (people of color) to sign up for a year-long class program titled "Mediaworks: Re/Presenting Power and Difference" so as to make the program "majority Black/Brown." All three are no longer in the positions they filled during the spring and two are no longer employed by the college. Because I had to go out of my way to find those answers to my questions which I feel like as an institution and you should be prepared. About 80 protesters have been sanctioned for breaking the student conduct code at The Evergreen State College in Olympia last spring, when race-related protests broke out on campus, college officials say. Sep 18, 2017 DailyWire.com. "And that Equity Council handed youhanded youa way to do this EASILY! (Adams, who died in 2004, was never criminally charged but in 1992 abruptly declined to seek reelection after eight other women accused him of sexual misconduct.) All campus activities would be subsumed into this quest, which would include some version of "mandatory anti-oppression training for the faculty" (a condition that Evergreen professors, progressive though they might be, rejected by majority vote); the creation of a new administrative position for a "VP for Equity and Inclusion," who would be independently budgeted and operate autonomously; "equity"-based curriculum planning and assessment of student learning; and a requirement that all future faculty hires be subjected to an "equity justification." From the outset the protesters wanted (at least) three members of the faculty and staff to leave their positions, preferably by being fired. Can you understand why some people view that as liberal intolerance? Bridges meets with students at 4 p.m. to discuss Weinstein, the actions of ODell and other concerns. Oddly enough, despite its blue-chip progressive credentials, Evergreen State has been marked by quite a bit of racial tension. Sign up now to get the Washington Examiners breaking news and timely commentary delivered right to your inbox. newsletter for analysis you wont find anywhereelse. What you are seeing is months and years of being ignored." But, while Evergreen is far from perfect, pretending it is a hotbed of racism is both disingenuous and dangerous. Europe: 50 (+6) countries, 230 languages, 743M people 1 subreddit. That "mandatory sensitivity and cultural competency training" for faculty? ", The meeting ended with the Gumbo Potluck Demand. ", Bridges assumed the presidency of Evergreen State only in the fall of 2015, after serving for 10 years as president of Whitman College, a small, well-regarded liberal-arts institution serving 1,500 students in Walla Walla, Washington. A Day of Presence (scheduled for April 14 this year) typically followed the Day of Absence, marked by workshops and other events focused on race relations. She too resigned from her position. "We want gumbo!" Will Republicans really pick the one candidate Biden can beat? SEPT. 21, 2016: STUDENTS PROTEST . Whats going on there? The group consisted of 28 members, six of whom were current faculty members and they set to work to outline a strategic equity plan. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/evergreen-copes-with-fallout-months-after-day-of-absence-sparked-national-debate, New federal guidance raises questions for legal marijuana. On January 11, 2017, the same two students plus several others armed with noisemakers interrupted the swearing-in of new campus police chief Stacy Brown, seized the microphone from another campus official, and began chanting, "F cops!" The bill has little chance of passing in the Democratic-controlled state, but it's an ominous sign. All Rights Reserved. format for Day of Absence/Day of Presence, in which whites will be asked to leave campus, rather than the tradition of having people of color leave campus. Bridges countered that the University of Chicago was simply "tone deaf to the academic and developmental needs of many students.". Another student, Kaí-Avé Douvia, who called himself a "person of color" but who is not black, accused Jamil of reverse racism and put up his own post substituting the word "white" for "PoC" and "black/brown." Evergreen's likely most famous graduate is Matt Groening (class of 1977), creator of The Simpsons. He says it brought threats that eventually drove him and his wife, Professor Heather Heying, off-campus over safety concerns. He issues a response to their demands, although several of the promises already were in the works. Hey hey, ho ho racist teachers have got to go. It was not the first time that Weinstein had publicly taken a lone-wolf ideological stance in a racially tinged campus dispute. Robert Kerekes Jr., 53, of New Jersey, is arrested for allegedly making phone calls against the college in June. Lowe yells. It was terrifying. Campus Argument Goes Viral As Evergreen State Is Caught In Racial Turmoil (HBO) Trump claims he will be arrested Tuesday, calls for protest | GMA ABC News New Bret Weinstein Testifies to. The meeting opened with this exchange between a female protester and Bridges: "All of us are students and have homework and projects and things due. A few minutes later Bridges pleaded over the din to let him please adjourn the meeting so he could read the list of demands: "You have to give me some privacy, folks. In 2015, two unarmed black students were shot and wounded by an Olympia police officer for allegedly stealing beer and assaulting the officer with their skateboards. The protesters face off for a few hours, and one man is arrested for disorderly conduct. One member of the council was Rashida Love, director of Evergreen's First Peoples Multicultural Advising Services office, which offers support to minority students. Feeling dumbfounded. It was a warning that segued directly into the 911 call about an armed campus intruder that closed down Evergreen from June 1-5. Make no mistake about it, racism exists all around us and white supremacy has been and continues to be responsible for many terrible things. . Before protests erupted on The Evergreen State College in May, student unrest against police and the college's administration had been building up for months. The students didn't get everything they asked for. Ivette Feliciano shoots, produces and reports on camera for PBS NewsHour Weekend. Head of ESG & Statistical Reporting, Leading Leaders Nordea Helsinki, Uusimaa, Finland 1 week ago Be among the first 25 applicants They also broke into an interview with a candidate for the newly formed equity and diversity position to voice their opinions about racism at Evergreen. Yes, some will say, indeed, some have said, that with their departures Evergreen has four fewer white supremacists in its midst. Subscribe to Heres the Deal, our politics Now there's a resurgence, and there seems to be a backlash again.". Evergreen students wanted her fired because, well, because she was the chief of police. The changes to the Day of Absence event came on the heels of other major changes on campus that Weinstein and Heying felt were being forced upon the faculty with no room for discussion.