The College Fix

College is ‘contacting would-be students’ as enrollment drops

Uh-oh: it looks like the Mizzou Effect may be coming to Evergreen State College.

Evergreen’s president, George Bridges, has confirmed that the college has experienced a “slight decline” in enrollment “since the campus incidents erupted in May,” according to The Olympian.

While noting that the enrollment decline is “not at the levels of other colleges in the country that have experienced student unrest in recent years,” Bridges nonetheless claims that Evergreen officials “will be contacting would-be students. On Monday, staff and volunteers began calling about 1,200 students who were admitted and haven’t enrolled in classes yet.”

“We’re also calling those current students who were here in the spring, didn’t graduate and didn’t register for fall classes,” The Olympian reports Bridges as saying.

This information comes as the college is undertaking a series of actions in response to the madness that took place at Evergreen at the end of this school year. These actions, as reported by The Olympian, include:

▪ Protesting 101: Bridges said he doesn’t believe students knew they were breaking the law or the college’s code of conduct during their demonstrations.

“We are sending this week a letter to every student at Evergreen articulating and outlining the conduct code, the violations that have been committed, and the fact that some of them involved criminal actions,” Bridges said. “…They need to be informed because most of the students had no clue.”

▪ More money for police: Bridges said he has asked Stacy Brown, chief of Police Services, to conduct a needs assessment by Aug. 1.

Brown is looking at training, staffing, resources, and what she believes she needs to meet the needs of the college, Evergreen spokeswoman Sandra Kaiser said.

Bridges said he plans to have a response to the needs assessment by Aug. 15.

“What I’ve learned over the last many weeks is the college hasn’t invested adequately in law enforcement,” he said. “Our police services unit has been underfunded for a number of years, and we’re going to need to change that.”

▪ Code of conduct updates: Bridges said the code hasn’t been updated in about 12 years, and it’s missing information on student demonstrations and other critical issues.

One of the areas he would like to address is the discipline process for students who break the code. Bridges described Evergreen’s process as “painfully slow.”

“Discipline has to be quick and certain,” he said.

Bridges also claims that “the college has begun the disciplinary process for some students who violated the conduct code,” and that half a dozen students and “an untold number of faculty members” are under review, with summonses having been issues to the students in question.

Read the whole story here.

MORE: Evergreen State upheaval felt like some sort of warzone, scholar says

MORE: Read the emails Evergreen State’s president was sent that denounce him as a foolish coward

Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on Twitter