VIDEO: Evergreen prez agrees to excuse protesters from homework
New video from Evergreen State College shows students demanding to be excused from their homework assignments so they could continue to protest.
As Campus Reform initially reported, hundreds of students marched through campus Thursday demanding the resignation of Professor Bret Weinstein, who had questioned the school’s decision to ask white people to leave campus for a day of diversity programming in an all-staff email.
As a result, student protesters confronted Weinstein on campus in a video that has since made national headlines, shouting “fuck you, you piece of shit” and asking him to apologize for his email.
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Videos from Evergreen have since continued to leak, painting a chaotic portrait of campus in which protesters try to bully administrators into kowtowing to their demands, and in one case even tell the school’s president, George Bridges, to “shut the fuck up.”
“No, fuck you, George. We don’t want to hear a Goddamn thing you have to say,” one protester can be heard saying as Bridges attempts to speak. “You talk so fucking much. No, you shut the fuck up.”
Another video of a meeting between protesters and Bridges shows one student asking to be relieved of homework assignments, to which Bridges states that he will comply.
“All of us are students and have homework and projects and things due. Have you sent an email out to your faculty letting them know?” one student protester asks, saying “what’s been done about that” and noting that she and her peers were participating in the meeting “on [their] own time.”
“It’s the first thing I’ll do. I have not done it yet, I will do it right now,” Bridges replies while one protester declares that professors “need to be told that these assignments won’t be done on time and we don’t need to be penalized for that.”
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Later in the video, which appears to be taken after student protesters had submitted a list of demands to Bridges, one student declares that if Bridges were to avoid responding to the demands on deadline he would subsequently “need to pay for a potluck.”
“I can pay for a potluck anyway,” Bridges quips as students shout, “We want gumbo!”
Bridges did, notably, respond to the protester’s demands by their Friday deadline, stopping short of agreeing to fire Weinstein but thanking student protesters who had just told him to “shut the fuck up” for “the passion and courage” they had shown him.
“We are grateful to the courageous students who have voiced their concerns,” Bridges begins his reply, concluding his statement by reiterating his “gratitude” for the “passion and courage” protesters had “shown [him] and others” during their demonstrations.
“Free speech must be fostered and encouraged. Every faculty member, every student, every staff member must have the freedom to speak openly about their views,” his statement adds. “Discrimination of any form is not acceptable or tolerated on our campus. We must treat each other with respect and care.”
Campus Reform reached out to Evergreen State for comment on the matter, and is currently awaiting a response.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @AGockowski
