Education

Evergreen State President Confesses He’s ‘Disappointed’ With Students

student protest Shutterstock/Danomyte

David Krayden Ottawa Bureau Chief
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The object of abuse at Evergreen State College students admits he’s “immensely disappointed” in his rioting, anarchic student body. College president George Bridges isn’t making any more excuses for the students who reduced his college to a chaotic mess and heaped epithets and insults at its president, Campus Reform reports.

Despite his initial support for the protesters, Bridges is now echoing the trustees’ declaration that their actions were “indefensible,” though he also claims to hold no grudge over their treatment of him, personally.

“I was immensely disappointed with the students who obstructed his class,” Bridges told NBC News on Monday, saying, that “Those actions are indefensible.”

Bridges went so far as to acknowledge that the college is further assessing the student action but said the investigation has nothing to do with disciplining the students because, “I felt very comfortable. I never felt unsafe. It was a matter of listening to their concerns.”

Many faculty and staff sided with the students in an open letter that declared “solidarity” with the angry protest. The school’s board of trustees was not sympathetic, calling the mayhem “unacceptable behavior” that showed a “lack of tolerance and respect.”

Bridges initially found the behavior anything but unacceptable and actually found reasons to praise the students’ “courage” to stand up to the school’s administration.

Specifically, he cited the students’ “courage” to stage a riot over an email from professor Bert Weinstein who objected to being told to leave the campus with other white peopule and take some diversity training so the black students could enjoy a segregated day without them. Previously, the “Day of Absence” was entirely voluntary and not a dictate.

“There is a huge difference between a group or coalition deciding to voluntarily absent themselves from a shared space in order to highlight their vital and under-appreciated roles and a group or coalition encouraging another group to go away,” Weinstein wrote, describing the order to stay away as a “show of force, and an act of oppression in and of itself.”

Weinstein might be credited with some courage because as soon as his email was viewed by students, they descended upon the professor’s class to yell profanity at him to the point where the college security told him to leave the campus because they could not ensure his safety.

The professor’s departure did not dampen the student enthusiasm for mayhem as they next arrange a “meeting” with the college president that consisted of the mob shouting obscenities at Bridges and telling him to “shut the fuck up.”

At the time Bridges was apparently impressed with the display, declaring his “gratitude” for what he described as their “passion and courage.”

Their passion then proceeded to lock up Bridges and other administrators in an office until all the students’ demands were met.

“The priority is that they stay in that room. If they aren’t in that room, then we did something wrong, so you all need to watch that door, watch all the doors, the windows, you need to keep eyes on them,” said one protester while another added, “The only priority is that y’all stay in this space until those demands can happen.”

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