The campus of Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, which has become a battleground where students bullied a leftist professor, hilariously accusing him of being a racist as they yelled and screamed at him, has devolved to the point where a college official told students who formed campus vigilante groups to stop brandishing bats and batons.
Vice President for Student Affairs Wendy Endress sent an email to faculty that included a message sent to students on Sunday by Sharon Goodman, director of Evergreen’s Residential and Dining Service, or RAD, that urged the “community patrol” to cease carrying the weapons. Goodman wrote:
Dear RAD Students,
We are aware of a small group of students coordinating a community patrol of housing and campus. We acknowledge and understand the fear and concerns that are motivating these actions. We also understand that these students are seeking to provide an alternative source of safety from external entities as well as those community members who they distrust.
Community patrols can be a useful tool for helping people to feel safe, however the use of bats or similar instruments is not productive. Some members of this group have been observed carrying batons and/or bats. Carrying bats is causing many to feel unsafe and intimidated. The bats must be put away immediately in order to protect all involved. Non-students participating in this activity are advised to leave campus.
On Monday, the college closed, claiming an unspecified “external threat”; last week it was closed for two days due to a “direct threat to campus safety.”
Also on Monday, Endress asked faculty to counsel students to “embrace choices that de-escalate.” She cited an email from an Evergreen professor concerned about one student, who wrote:
Because I had shown some criticism to the protest that was occurring on campus in earlier weeks I have become targeted and harassed by a wide number of students on campus. Recently there have been a number of students who patrol lower campus with weapons like baseball bats and tasers who claim to be making the campus safer but in reality are making campus more hostile.
The whole chain of events began in early May when Professor Bret Weinstein was targeted by students because he challenged their idea that whites needed to stay off campus on an anti-white “Day of Absence.” Weinstein was forced to flee campus and hold his class in a local park, as police informed him he would not be safe on campus.
After that, Evergreen State “video and performance art” professor Naima Lowe chastised several white colleagues for supporting student activists and their “race-based equity reforms,” yelling:
YOU are the motherf**kers that we’re pushing against! You can’t see your way outta your own a**! So don’t TALK to me about what YOU need. This is about THEIR needs. And that Equity Council handed you — handed you! — a way to do this EASILY! We put so much f**kin’ work– you know, one of the things we talked about is, “Oh, we gotta have a process.” You know how many people on that Council got anything like release time to do that work? About a grand. So when, exactly, were we gonna have time to sit there and wax F**KING POETIC for YOUR benefit about SH*T that has been in the works– We are literally asking for the same sh*t that students have been asking for since the ’70s!
Students were caught on video ranting about everything from “racist white teachers” and “white-a** administrators” to “black power!” when they “met” with President George Bridges and other college administrators.
In addition, faculty demanded Weinstein be punished for allegedly provoking a “white supremacist backlash.”