A column in the Seattle Times blasts Evergreen State College, claiming that the chaos over Bret Weinstein may signal the end of the 50-year-old institution.
An op-ed by the Seattle Times editorial board condemned Evergreen State College for their handling of an incident featuring Biology professor Bret Weinstein, who has faced a backlash over his refusal to participate in what the New York Times called “a day of racial segregation.”
“The public state college near Olympia has become a national caricature of intolerant campus liberalism in both The New York Times and Fox News,” the editorial board writes. “At least one professor has been harangued and classes disrupted by shouting mobs of students accusing the famously progressive campus of ‘systemic racism.'”
The column mentions an important concern for the Evergreen Board of Trustees: the college has failed to meet its enrollment goal, which they are required to meet in order to retain their state funding.
The editorial board claims that Evergreen President George Bridges is tasked with assuring prospective students and their parents not only that he will not allow student protesters to take the campus hostage but also that the college will manage to stay open by meeting its enrollment quota.
The two problems are now entwined. Evergreen President George Bridges and his administration need to assure future students and their parents that academics come first — and not acquiesce to the 200-or-so student protesters at the expense of the 4,000-student campus. Without safety, there’s no learning, and without learning, Evergreen will wither into irrelevance.
The editorial board closes by claiming that the spring 2017 chaos at Evergreen State College should serve as a case study for future generations learning about the First Amendment and the “aching need for better civil discourse.”
Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about economics and higher education for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart.com