Education

Evergreen State College Students Resurrect No-Whites-Allowed ‘Day Of Absence’

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Evergreen State College students are doubling down on a no-white-people-allowed “Day of Absence” after the controversial proposal made national headlines in 2017.

Students have created a new three-day version of the event for 2018, which will include events on and off campus, according to The College Fix. (RELATED: Rutgers Student Speaks Out Against Financial Aid For Illegal Immigrants)

Certain events are billed as being open to the public, but others are restricted to “people of color” only, The College Fix reported. A poster obtained by The College Fix stated all segregated events will be held off-campus. It also directed students to RSVP to a website that spells out the words “No Nazis Allowed” in its web address.

Evergreen State stated in 2017 the program would be replaced, forcing students to operate independently of the university for future “Day of Absence” events.

The Daily Caller News Foundation spoke with Evergreen State College’s communications manager Zach Powers and he provided this statement:

There is no Day of Absence event this spring at The Evergreen State College. Gross and deliberate mischaracterizations of the event in 2017 provoked violent threats against students, staff and faculty.  Those falsehoods, and our priority on campus safety, made it necessary to create different ways to have important conversations about equity and inclusion. This year, Evergreen has increased opportunities for students, staff and faculty to engage in new ways on these vitally important topics.
Evergreen staff are researching the appearance on social media of purported Day of Absence flyers, which have not appeared on campus. Any such flyers will be removed, because they violate the campus posting policy requiring the name of the sponsoring person or group, and specific contact information.     
In accordance with our mission and the laws of Washington state, Evergreen is resolutely and firmly committed to being an institution that is open to all, which does not discriminate on the basis of race, creed, color, national origin, sex, marital status, age, disability, retaliation, sexual orientation/gender identity, or military status.

The racially charged ceremonies were set to begin Wednesday and last until the end of the week on Friday, according to organizers who spoke with The College Fix. The theme for the week will be “Deinstitutionalize/Decolonize.”

“The mission of this event is to bring POC [people of color] together in order to create a reclamation of space and move forward into the future,” the RSVP page stated. “In reaction to [the] institution’s consistent disregard for our safety, we are operating independently of the college. This is a day for us, by us.”

The RSVP page also stated there would be anti-racist workshops available for all “white folks and people who do not identify as POC.”

White biology professor Bret Weinstein was forced into hiding in 2017 for criticizing the program after students began radically protesting his comments. The school ultimately punished 80 students for shutting down the campus.

*This story has been updated to include a statement from Evergreen State College 

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