Dear College President, Pay attention - school is in session
“Didn’t you teach us to do shit like this? - The institution is here to serve us, that is what we pay for!”
Written by Neil Gonsalves for Seeking Veritas on Substack
The 2017 student protest at Evergreen State College serves as an excellent case study for colleges and universities who lose sight of their core function of education, in favour of virtue signalling and staying trendy.
The Evergreen State College is located in Seattle, Washington. A small public college known for its liberal disposition. A series of events between 2011 and 2017 put faculty, administration and students on a collision course.
In 2011, the college changed its mission statement to highlight its commitment to diversity and social justice. Over the next several years the college president George Bridges, along with several administrators and faculty committed their attention to a campus wide equity agenda. The president even started signing all this memos and communications with the phrase, “education-solidarity-inclusion”.
At the 2015 campus call to action forum, the agenda specifically focused on the experiences of racialized faculty and students. White faculty made public statements acknowledging;
“All white people benefit from racism”
“To not act against racism, is to support racism”
“Even though student experience is a better guide, professors are considered more credible - positionality must be constantly addressed”
By 2016, the equity council had drafted a new equity policy. A meeting was called to discuss it, the policy was not sent out to faculty until a few minutes before the meeting. At the meeting however, the new policy was being celebrated not discussed. A member of the equity council stated unequivocally,
“We are going to do it - don’t get it twisted. We invite you join us but if you want to be an obstructionist then you can go work alone”
The faculty at the meeting were told that, “anyone who opposes the policy is racist”. - The equity council representatives provided campus wide presentations, highlighting the importance of the student voice and their need to take control of the policies that impact them. The students were energized and engaged, at a student council meeting shortly thereafter, students called on each other to develop new strategies to address the systemic racism that they were experiencing. Three suggestions were offered;
Political organization;
Non-traditional more violent direct action; and
Prayer
Since the 1970s staff, faculty and later students participated in a social awareness exercise called ‘Day of Absence’ - Participants of colour spent one day off campus in order to make their absence and their vital role in campus life felt.
However in 2017, the event organizers made one significant change. Instead of people of colour opting not to come to campus, that year all white students and staff were asked to stay away from campus.
The Day of Absence went by without significant incident. However about a month later Professor Bret Weinstein, a biology professor who considers himself to be fairly progressive, found himself on the pointy end of the social justice activism’s spear. He had objected to the idea of asking one group based on the colour of their skin to go away from campus. He suggested there was a categorical difference between choosing to opt out of something and being told to go away. He communicated those thoughts to other faculty via email.
On May 23, 2017 a group of angry students cornered Professor Weinstein in a hallway in protest and berated him for the email. They called him a “piece of shit” and demanded that he resign claiming his email dissent regarding the Day of Absence was racist and harmful to students.
Professor Weinstein attempted to communicate with the students, but they responded that they “are not speaking on terms of white privilege”. The students, echoing comments made my faculty a couple years previously, shouted that they didn’t need to learn about racism because their lived experience gave them all the knowledge they required.
Students concerned about Weinstein’s safety called the police, however the protesting students physically prevented the campus police from reaching him. As the situation began escalating, students claiming to be fearful for their lives due to systemic racism, marched to President George Bridges office to confront him. The president attempted to speak to them but the group yelled at him;
“Fuck you George, we don’t want to hear a goddamn thing you have to say so shut the fuck up”
The president complied and organized a meeting with other administrators and the protestors. At the meeting the protestors let administrators know that “their white silence was violence”. Students expressed their frustration that faculty were allowed to disagree with the new equity policy. They were even more alarmed that faculty were allowed to email their dissent.
President Bridges agreed faculty who dissent were a problem. He stated that he understood that faculty needed to be brought in for training on equity and if they still didn’t get onboard, they needed to be sanctioned. He asked the students protestors to hold him accountable to that pledge. - To be clear, he was pledging to sanction faculty dissent!
While negotiations were in progress, other students barricaded buildings with furniture preventing faculty and administrators from leaving. They also prevented campus police from entering. The escalating action was now at levels considered criminal, however the president directed campus police to stand down and not take action against the student protesters.
By the next day President Bridges and senior administrators met with the student leaders who issued a list of demands. The students demanded the following “reparations” for the impact of Professor Bret Weinstein’s email;
Mandatory bias training for faculty.
Refund of the semester tuition.
Permission to not turn in their homework, and
Free food for the next quarter,
That night, Professor Naime Lowe, from the media faculty emailed everyone on campus congratulating the students for doing exactly what they had been taught to do. Earlier in the day she attended campus, even though she was off for the day to lend her support to the students. She berated her fellow faculty members stating they were complicit, urged them to support the students and stated that she had stopped coming to faculty meetings because they were all racists.
Bret Weinstein the target of the student’s derision received support from only one faculty member other than his own wife, Heather Heying. She was a faculty member at Evergreen State College for fifteen years.
When all the dust settled Professor Weinstein and his wife Professor Heying were asked to leave the college because they were not wanted for the fall semester. By September 2017, they both resigned. The campus police chief Stacy Brown, who was helpless to maintain order and safeguard the staff given the president’s order to stand down, also resigned.
The college president stayed on, he had agreed to many of the protesters demands and announced that he was grateful for the passion and courage of students.
None of the student were sanctioned for their involvement in criminal activity, including forcible confinement. President Bridges even hired one of the student leaders of the protest to join his Presidential Equity Advisors.
There are several key takeaways worth exploring:
For senior leaders in administration: The long term reputation damage from the protest led to consistent declines in enrolment over the next several years. Failure of leadership exacerbated the problem, and ultimately impacted the bottom line.
For faculty: Being an educator is about educating not indoctrinating. When a disproportionate amount of time is invested in a singular ideology and dissent is stifled, the result is predictable; uninformed activism and self-righteous indignation.
For students: Getting swept up in mob mentality is fairly common when emotions run high. A lot has been written on the subject that may be worth exploring. - Activism is undoubtedly a positive part of a free and democratic society, however simultaneously failing to respect the basic rights of other individuals in that same free society is hypocritical.
The common thread for all three groups: Good intentions, unchecked and unbalanced, can result in unintended negative consequences.
All that being said, if I had to be completely objective I would have to admit that the student’s succeeded. Their demands were met; none of them were sanctioned; their leader got a job with the college as an equity advisor; the police chief resigned and the faculty member who dared to dissent was forced to resign!
Perhaps the students said it best;
“Didn’t you teach us to do shit like this? …. The institution is here to serve us, that is what we pay for!”
Maybe when we started treating students like customers, we were destined to face the perception that the customer is always right!
Film maker Michael Nayna created the three part documentary on the incident which I have included for your quick reference. - I encourage you to watch all three parts and ask yourself, what if that happened at your institution?
About the author: Neil Gonsalves is an Indian-born Canadian immigrant who grew up in Dubai, U.A.E. and moved to Canada in 1995. He is an Ontario college educator, a TEDx speaker, an author and columnist, and an advocate for new immigrant integration and viewpoint diversity.
Seeking Veritas on Substack | Sankarsingh-Gonsalves Productions. 2024 ©️
(The views contained in this article are solely those of the author, intended for opinion based editorial purposes and/or entertainment only. They do not represent the views of any organization I am otherwise associated with.)
We cannot be so blind and deaf to not think that this would not happen here. People are now afraid to speak their truth, talk about their beliefs, live out their heritage for fear of being called a racist or some other kind of ism, so most are becoming complacent in order to “keep the peace”.