Protests erupt over racism at Evergreen State College

But American colleges expect other non-white minorities to be able to read, no? Asians and Indians, for example.

 

Yes, she was reading slowly and seemed to stumble but she corrected herself pretty quickly, when reading "allegations". Perhaps she was just tired. Assumptions have been made about her level of literacy, based on a couple of sentences, and those assumptions might be incorrect.

I agree with the biology professor. Deciding to stay home or boycott an event is a personal choice that's difficult to dispute. However, no one should have the right to insist that other people who have paid to attend courses or who work for the university should have to participate in the day of absense.

 

I don't know what colleges are doing any more. It used to be test scores that counted. now... apparently it is about keeping all things in equal count.

 

They'll have a great future in the fast food industry.

 

I don't want these ****ers makin my whoppers. These kinda *******s are why I still get pickles on my burger when I damn well told them NO PICKLES!

 

This is what happens when the minorities take over.

 

It's got nothing to do with skin for or national origin. It has everything to.donwith 'urban culture' that glamorizes a lack of education and violence.

 

It'll be worse when the white people are the minority. What a shitstorm that's going to be.

 

Here's more:

http://www.kiro7.com/news/local/pro...college-over-political-correctness_/534361120

Security tight at graduation ceremony for The Evergreen State College
by: KIRO 7 News Staff Updated: Jun 16, 2017 - 12:11 PM
TACOMA, Wash. - On Friday, hundreds of The Evergreen State College students will graduate in a ceremony that has been moved off-campus following protests and threats.

School officials say it will be easier to maintain security at Tacoma’s Cheney Stadium instead of holding their graduation on campus.

The Evergreen State College moves commencement ceremony to Tacoma
Joey Gibson speaks during a April 27, 2017 rally in support of free speech in Berkeley, Calif. Gibson has organized pro-Trump, free speech rallies along the West Coast, targeting more liberal areas. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, file)
Trump rally leader: Evergreen State College is next


Security is being made a priority there.

After one person was arrested as a conservative, pro-Trump group protested on campus Thursday evening, KIRO 7 has not heard of any protests planned at Friday’s 10:30 a.m. graduation ceremony or on the Evergreen campus.

School officials changed the venue away from campus after the protests gained more attention following a professor challenging the school’s "day of absence" in which white students would leave campus to discuss racism and equity.

What followed were protests and a shooting threat that closed the campus for two days.

In wake of those threats, the school administration officials say the Red Square graduation ceremony normally held on campus would be moved to Cheney Stadium in Tacoma where crowds could be easier managed.

No one will be able to come to the ceremony or enter the parking lot without a ticket.

Security says they'll be screening every person who enters.

Here’s a short timeline of events:
Protests in May followed a white professor's decision to oppose an event in which organizers asked white students to leave campus for a talk about race. The event was a reversal of the college's longstanding annual "Day of Absence," in which minorities attend programs off campus.
Several videos were released on social media showing students screaming and cursing at administrators.
Advocates say the “Day of Absence” effort helps increase social awareness, but critics call it divisive.
The small college closed in early June for three days because of a non-specific threat made through a 911 call.
A man told the dispatch officer, “Yes, I am on my way to Evergreen [College] now with a .44 Magnum. I am going to execute as many people on that campus as I can get a hold of.”
The events garnered national attention. Scroll down for an expanded read on the college and recent activities.
Evergreen moved its venue for graduation in the wake of recent threats directed at the campus.
As Patriot Prayer’s event looms, the college closed its campus early on Thursday, June 15.

Why Evergreen College made national headlines
Protests in mid-May started in response to campus police questioning black students, according to a report in the Cooper Point Journal, the college’s student newspaper.

Students said they were protesting institutional racism.

A group of protesters sent the following statement to The Olympian: “What started out as anti-black comments on social media has turned into the dismissal of the rights of students and femmes of color, physical violence by police, and false sentencing of students protesting. Black trans disabled students are actively being sought out and confronted by campus police constantly, police are refusing to explain their actions and harassment. Students will not stand for this anymore, as students of color have never felt comfortable on campus and have not been treated equally.”

Tensions reached a new high after the public airing of an email exchange between school employees over a planned Day of Absence event.

The Day of Absence, based on a play by the same name, dates back to the 1970s at Evergreen. The day is part of two days of race and equity-related events, and in previous years minority students voluntarily left for an off-campus discussion.

This year that event was swapped: White students were asked to leave and minority students remained on campus. But the event had space for 200 students – only a fraction of the roughly 4,800 overall student body, college spokesman Zach Powers said.


Rashida Love, director of the First People’s Multicultural Advising Services program, sent an email asking for some white students to volunteer not to be on campus for the event, to leave the college more open for students of color, Powers said.

Professor Bret Weinstein then sent back an email saying that asking white students to stay off campus is an “act of oppression in and of itself,” the Journal reported.

Some students have since protested Weinstein, calling him racist and asking the administration to fire him. Videos circulated of protesters confronting Weinstein have shown tense and sometimes angry moments. Weinstein has gone on Fox News to talk about the controversy and penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.

Love's department released the following statement, along with email exchanges, in early June.
About the call that closed the school in early-June
Police released the threatening and chilling 911 call that closed The Evergreen State College for three days.

College President George Bridges closed campus after receiving the information from police about what they called a non-specific threat. KIRO 7 News obtained the audio.

A man told the dispatch officer, “Yes, I am on my way to Evergreen [College] now with a .44 Magnum. I am going to execute as many people on that campus as I can get a hold of,” the man said. “You have that, what’s going on here, you communist scumbag?”
The call was made from an unknown telephone number to a regular business line at the Thurston County Communications Center, a college spokesman said.

Nearly 5,000 students and faculty were notified of the closure by an emergency text system and a campus-wide speaker system. So were parents, who were urged to collect their children at the college day care.

Buildings were searched and no one was determined to be an active threat.

The school was technically on “suspended operations.” When asked about rumors of white supremacists calling in the threat, Vice President of College Relations Sandra Kaiser she did not know.

Kaiser also said the school doesn’t know if the threat is connected to recent racial tensions on campus.

“There’s nothing that I know of that connects these things directly, but of course, we live in troubled times, and you got to take public safety as a top priority for everybody,” Kaiser said.

Evergreen moved its commencement ceremony to Tacoma in the wake of the threats.

 

If liberal thinking were successful, we wouldn't be seeing this.
Evergreen College is proof that liberals should stick to art, and leave the governing to people with a sense of realism.

 

Here's more:

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-bl...n-on-historical-oppression-takes-an-ugly-turn


When a lesson on historical oppression takes an ugly turn

BY JAY STERLING SILVER, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 06/19/17 03:41 PM EDT 840

When a lesson on historical oppression takes an ugly turn

© Getty Images

The flap at Evergreen State College over a white professor’s objection to a “Day of Absence” where whites were asked to remain off campus for a day reflects a remarkable lack of awareness on the part of both the students and the professor of the actual justification for the event.


For years, students of color at Evergreen State, a progressive, state-funded college in Olympia, Washington, have held a Day of Absence where people of color meet off campus to discuss issues of race and diversity. The event was inspired by a 1965 play by Douglas Turner Ward in which the residents of a small, fictitious Southern town are suddenly absent for a day, impressing on the white townspeople the vital role its African-American residents play in the day-to-day life of the town.



And here’s the rub. This year, the Evergreen students reversed the tradition, and asked the white members of the university community to stay off campus on the Day of Absence. One white professor, Bret Weinstein, openly complained it was improperly exclusionary for one group to call for the absence of another group. In a carefully worded statement that garnered support outside the university for Weinstein’s position, the biology professor characterized the event, in effect, as a show of arbitrary power by a coalition of groups that have struggled over time to overcome their own subordination to arbitrary power.

Many students, in turn, accused Weinstein of a lack of solidarity and of having opened the door to the Pacific Northwest’s increasingly visible white nationalist movement to weigh in on the issue, and called for his firing. Social media commentary, as one might expect, turned nasty, and the threat of violence escalated, according to the university administration, to the point where classes were called off and the campus closed for several days.


Not only has the face-off between the two sides been an ugly chapter in Evergreen’s history, the dispute needn’t have arisen in the first place. Every event, including this year’s reverse Day of Absence, has a purpose, whether it is positive or not, and whether it is articulated or not.


Had the students and Weinstein understood and described what should have been the very constructive purpose of the event, all involved could have made a sophisticated statement in the struggle against racism at the very moment in time when, primed by the Trump victory, its vast reserves are bubbling up to the surface across the country. Instead, as both sides battle publicly, the good lesson to have been gained through the Day of Absence is lost, replaced by the dark one that anger over historical oppression can itself take an ugly turn.


And just what should this magical purpose of a white Day of Absence that eluded everyone have been?


That’s rather simple, and had nothing to do with a show of power by students or, as in Ward’s play, recognition of the vital contribution of the absent group to the community. Instead, the event should have been understood and billed as a day in which white exclusion — even though voluntary — gave those who stayed away a tiny hint at the experience of exclusion.


To what purpose? White privilege is fed, in large part, by a lack of empathy, an absence of the ability to feel – not just watch or be told about – what another is experiencing. A voluntary, white Day of Absence in which members of the dominant culture are excluded from the events and discussion of the day, may in a small way help illustrate to whites the dynamic of white privilege, which otherwise eludes members of the dominant culture who, on every other day, are on the inside looking out.


Jay Sterling Silver is a law professor at St. Thomas University School of Law. His commentary has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other national and local media.


The views of contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.

 

It'll be interesting to follow their enrollment levels going forward.

 

I don't think that's it at all. It's more likely that it's what results from a lifetime of indoctrination.

 

Here's more:

https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=9384

Conservative student flees radical climate at Evergreen State

Anthony Gockowski

Investigative Reporter
@AGockowski
on Jul 01, 2017 at 12:30 PM EDT
Following a series of radical protests on campus that forced one professor to flee for his safety and culminated in students holding the school's president hostage, at least one conservative student is leaving the school for good.
In a letter to Professor Bret Weinstein, whose email sparked the recent uproar, the student explains that they are fed up with the use of "identity politics" to "silence dissenting opinions" on campus.

A self-identified “conservative-libertarian” Evergreen State College student has elected to leave the school due to the recent campus unrest that shoved the school into the national spotlight.

According to an email obtained by Campus Reform through an open records request, a student (whose name has been kept anonymous) wrote to Professor Bret Weinstein to thank him for his bravery in voicing his opinion on the school’s annual tradition of a “Day of Absence,” previously reported by Campus Reform.

"I find the use of identity politics...as a way to shut down discussion [and] silence dissenting opinions." Tweet This

[RELATED: Evergreen faculty, students come out in support of Weinstein]

“Dear Bret, Thank you. Thank you for standing up to the ridiculousness of this student protest. Thank you for being brave and voicing your opinion on the matter, as well as many other students,” the student wrote, noting that they had become fed up with the “use of identity politics” on campus.

“As a first year student on this campus with conservative-libertarian values, I find the use of identity politics by many people on this campus as a way to shut down discussion, silence dissenting opinions, and bully students into silence,” the student went on to write, saying they believe “all people are individuals” and should be judged “on that alone.”

[RELATED: Lawmakers propose defunding Evergreen amid protests]

“I don’t know if you share those views but that is what you are standing up for in my eyes,” he added, noting that they would not be returning to the school in the fall because recent events had made clear that conservative viewpoints are not welcome.

“Because of the climate on this campus, as well as the rhetoric that I hear on a day to day basis, I will not be returning next year,” the student wrote. “I will probably never meet you but I wanted to express my thanks for trying to show that not everything is black and white, not everything on the left is good and the right is bad, and that free speech is what makes this country so great.”

[RELATED: Evergreen protesters hold admins hostage over demands]

The student concluded the message by applauding Weinstein’s “bravery,” saying that if he were to be fired, the student hopes he would be able to “find work at an institution that favors academic integrity over feelings.”

Campus Reform has not been able to establish contact with the student to request updates on the situation.

Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @AGockowski

 

What sort of parent would support 'lack of education' via inaction?

 

Do non-whites ever stop complaining about imaginary racism?

 

LOL, this forum is a prime example to any black person that racism sure as hell isn't imaginary.

 

If we are racists, there will be blacks hanging from trees.

 

How can you defend someone in college sounding that illiterate? Her color doesn't matter. It shouldn't. Pointing it out doesn't make one racist. Alluding to AA is a logical conclusion.

 

Having an open and honest discussion about race is not racism.

 

Or to those of any skin color.

There are some die-hards who can't let go.

 

That's tough talk, but I doubt if you are man enough.

 

That's the problem, its never open and honest.

 

Where did I defend it?

It shouldn't, but unfortunately it does.

Is it?

 

Yep, people love to inflame those masses. It ain't workin so much as a political tool no more. At least with one party.