The Evergreen State College which is located in Olympia, Washington, has had its own fair share of problems and difficulties in the past and has been witnessing a decline in their admissions over the last decade. As the college currently faces financial problems not only because of Pandemic but also the events that transpired in the year 2017, which put the Evergreen State College in a very deplorable position. At the center of this rapidly collapsing entropy was Bret Samuel Weinstein who was a professor of biology at the Evergreen State College and voiced his concerns about a change that drastically changed the view of the people about this college.
The Controversy
To know what exactly happened and how this whole situation blew up, we would have to first dip our toes into the year-old tradition of the Evergreen State College. According to this tradition that date’ back to the 1970′ in which the college held a day-long event called “Day Of Absence” that was inspired by Douglas Turner Ward’ play which also sported the same name. During this event the minority students and faculty voluntarily stay off of the campus in accordance to raise awareness about their contributions to the society and to discuss racial and campus issues.
But this tradition was changed in the year 2017, when the minority students which formed 25% of Evergreen students began to voice their concerns about feeling unwelcomed to the campus in the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. This led the College to come to the decision in which “it was decided that on Day of Absence, white students, staff and faculty will be invited to leave the campus for the day’s activities”. Though this off campus event could possibly only include 7% of the white student body.
Bret Weinstein’ Stand
Bret Weinstein called this decision are a dangerous precedent and might be a very unwise change and might make the minority students feel even more uneasy. To this the event organizers responded that the participation was voluntary and they did not imply that all white people should leave. After this many minority students carried out protests, but some radical students began to call out Weinstein to be a racist which later on escalated to threats. Weinstein and his wife, Professor Heather Heying, later resigned and reached a $500,000 settlement with the university, after having sued it for failing to “protect its employees from repeated provocative and corrosive verbal and written hostility based on race, as well as threats of physical violence”.
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