Anarchy at Evergreen State

Journalists like to talk about “evergreen” topics, and is there anything more evergreen right now than the anarchy at Evergreen State College? The college is back up and running again, but not until after a student mob took it upon themselves to roam the campus with baseball bats smashing windows of science buildings, because science, with its dedication to objectivity and standards and all, is oppressive.

Meanwhile, someone put up a fake Facebook page for embattled professor Bret Weinstein trying to make him out as a purveyor of violence:

Things are still so unsettled that Evergreen is going to move its commencement ceremonies next week to Cheney Stadium in Tacoma. Suggestion: Some merry pranksters should start circulating the rumor that Cheney Stadium is named for Dick Cheney, and then watch credulous leftists lose their minds. Another disaffected left-leaning professor at Evergreen State tweeted out this:

The person at the center of this meltdown is Evergreen president George Bridges. According to news reports, he does not use hand gestures when talking to students because he doesn’t want to trigger anyone with a possible microaggression. Or maybe his spine removal was so complete he can’t move his upper limbs any more. Clearly his brain no longer works. Will it surprise anyone to learn that Bridges is a sociologist? (My dictionary definition says, “Sociologist, N: Person who studies ‘society’ in order to deepen their own confusion.”)

Last fall, the University of Chicago issued a statement to incoming freshman that reads:

“Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called ‘trigger warnings,’ we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.”

Guess who objected to this statement? Yes—Evergreen president George Bridges. He wrote an op-ed for the Seattle Times that you have to read, not to believe:

Why Students Need Trigger Warnings and Safe Spaces

THE University of Chicago’s recent welcome to its incoming class wasn’t welcoming. The message, conveyed in a letter from the dean of students, revealed a profound indifference to concerns that many students now bring to colleges and universities.

Yet how colleges and universities respond to these concerns often proves critical to the success of students and to the freedom of faculty in educating an increasingly diverse student body. . .

Either the university is completely tone deaf to the academic and developmental needs of many students or is launching its own counterattack on what it perceives as an unwarranted assault of political correctness on campus. . .

Ironically, the University of Chicago’s welcoming message is, in itself, a trigger warning to students — the campus offers no safe spaces or warnings about potentially offensive or harmful content in its curricula or programs.

And so what we get is a campus that is unsafe even for progressive professors like Bret Weinstein, let alone any students who don’t fall in with the mob. Call it “building Bridges.” Or perhaps we’ll say that Evergreen’s radicalized students have blown up Bridges, because if the trustees have any self respect at all (doubtful) Bridges should be dismissed very soon. Enrollment at Evergreen has already been in decline the last few years, and, like the University of Missouri, will now likely plummet.

Meanwhile, the campus rot is now spreading to Stanford:

Students protest onstage at Admit event, urging undocumented support

As Admit Weekend kicked off Thursday, students from four campus activist groups took the stage at the University’s official Welcome event in Memorial Auditorium to protest for increased University support for undocumented students.

About a dozen students from Stanford Sanctuary Now (SSN), Students for the Liberation of All People (SLAP), MEChA de Stanford and the Stanford Student and Labor Alliance (SALA) stepped onstage bearing cardboard signs as Provost Persis Drell addressed prospective freshmen (ProFros) and their families.

The students remained for roughly an hour through a series of administrators’ speeches, staying silent during the talks but chanting during intermissions and taking up a mantra of their own when Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Richard Shaw tried to lead admits in a chant.

And Stanford did nothing.

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