It started back in the late 1960’s, and without a long-winded historical diatribe, culminated in radical students spurred by leftist faculty demanding that all “white” individuals, including staff, be denied access to campus for one day.
Welcome to the home of the Geoducks, where fanatic social engineering experiments are part of the daily culture and even the university’s mascot has Stephen Pinker and other notable linguists at odds whether the name is referring to a clam, an earthly duck, or some Gore green-speak. The zany liberal art school, known for extremism and hand holding for world peace, recently passed the threshold of idealistic into the realm of a Berkeley-style prison of close minded entitlement.
On Thursday, adult swim commenced in dramatic fashion on the Olympia, Washington tax-payer funded campus, as professional fringe groups from both extremes collided in a swimming pool of name calling, chanting, pot smoking and a general garden variety selection of rhetoric. The Olympia newspaper reports that the party was supervised by 65 Washington State patrol officers donning level-10 riot gear attire and with trigger fingers on the tear gas. Surprisingly, the entire spectrum of the protesters and demonstrators were reasonably well-behaved amid highly charged emotions and intensive divisiveness. Only two participants were arrested.
In a prelude to the Thursday’s clash, current Evergreen State University President George Bridges, apparently felt compelled to defend the pervading attitude of tolerant-intolerance and absence of free speech infecting the faculty and students of the college and resulting in an environment eerily reminiscent of post-WWII Soviet Europe. Bridges submitted an editorial to the Seattle Times focusing on a theme of apologetic damage control, but failed to acknowledge or address intolerance as the direct cause of the toxic atmosphere hindering the basic premise of learning.
Specifically, Bridges omitted any mention of beleaguered faculty member Bret Weinstein and the lynch mob mentality of certain student groups. Weintstein made global headlines for his open opposition to the proposed event excluding whites from campus and an immediate backlash from students calling for his firing. In previous years on campus, minority students made the decision to vacate the premises for a day in a show of empowerment and protest.
However, this year the idea of voluntary was chucked for a plan to forcibly bar Caucasians from the institution for 24 hours. The self-proclaimed “liberal” professor, was the lone sensible voice preventing a complete collapse of balanced dialogue and debate. Weinstein’s stance on the free sharing of ideas, led to a downward spiral of student protests and threats made to the school by outside instigators and the aforementioned war between people with too much time on their hands. The ongoing exchange featuring Weinstein and institution, has not yet reached a resolution while the justice system waits.
Allegedly, Bridge’s world view through looney tune glasses, includes the notion that encouraging one viewpoint to thrive, while the alternate perspective is locked in a medieval dungeon under the harshest of conditions, solves all the problems in society. The university President is so confident in his personal mission statement, that graduation for the 2017 class will be held at a minor league baseball stadium over 25 miles from campus due to safety concerns resulting from the ongoing controversy. What speaks to the people clearly is not a biased and tawdry editorial, but the additional $100 thousand required to rent the stadium for commencement activities, passed onto the taxpayers thanks to the ridiculous policy of a ridiculous institution. Hopefully, the voters in the state of Washington will pressure politicians to shutdown the public university that convolutes the basic premises of freedom and openly promotes hypocrisy.
Read The Olympia story here.
Check out Bridge’s Editorial here.