This is the first in a series reporting on a 900-page document dump obtained by The College Fix through a public records act request to Evergreen State College. Names of private citizens have been abbreviated by The Fix.
Evergreen State College’s President George Bridges fielded many angry emails that basically called him a coward and a fool after the school erupted in a flurry of racial protests and the president largely sided with campus agitators, documents recently obtained by The College Fix through a public records act request show.
“You are enabling a truly reprehensible ideology to consume your campus and if you don’t stop it soon there is very little chance the college will survive. This type of appeasement is dangerous and will not be good for anyone, especially for the students who believe that these threats and intimidation will win the day,” Vicki H. wrote to Bridges.
Gary R. told him “to grow a pair and stop worrying about the minorities or your job.”
One prospective Evergreen parent even decided she’d no longer let her children attend the college.
The Illinois mother, Ann M., said her children “really wanted to attend” Evergreen, but that she couldn’t let them enroll this upcoming year. “However, because you have caved to the idiotic demands of your liberal crazed snowflake students, (for example, letting them off the hook if their homework is late), my husband and I have decided that Evergreen State is definitely not where we want our twins educated,” she wrote to Bridges.
The emails critical of Bridges were sent to the president after students in May confronted and cornered a white biology professor, Bret Weinstein (pictured), who earlier in the semester had refused to leave the school during its “Day of Absence,” in which all white people were asked to stay off campus.
The demonstrators accused the scholar and college of racism, and in a later meeting yelled at Bridges and his staff with the same charges, at one point not even letting the president go to the bathroom alone for fear he might try to slip out. During the upheaval, the college was shut down for multiple days in the wake of threats received. Meanwhile, student vigilantes roamed the halls with bats on a campus known for its hippie vibe and far-left progressive leanings.
Drew G., a 2004 Evergreen graduate and former student of Weinstein’s, heaped praise on the scholar while also issuing his disappointment with Bridges.
“I am not happy with how the administration handled this. I think you are allowing the violent eruptions of politics to create an unsafe campus environment, and I think that even if it makes you unpopular you need to stand up for those being bullied for their view points and make it clear that differences of opinion are fine but mobbing, harassing, doxxing, and anything else that puts another person at risk should never be tolerated,” Drew wrote.
Bridges, soon after the protests, gave into nearly all of the students’ demands, including to require police officers and employees to go through multicultural training, create an equity and multicultural center, hire a full-time coordinator of the Trans & Queer Center, and increase the budget of the First Peoples Multicultural Advising Services, among other concessions.
The prospective mother who withdrew her twins from the school, Ann, also praised Weinstein, referring to the students who harassed the professor as “deranged.”
“If this is what higher education looks like in the State of Washington, then we will take our tuition, room & board, and fees elsewhere. You ought to be ashamed of yourself for letting the inmates run the asylum,” Ann wrote.
Sharon and Carl F., both Evergreen alumni and also the parents of a current student, told Bridges they were “shocked” by the protests held on campus.
“What is most concerning is that you allowed a group of people to intimidate, insult and threaten a professor and scare those caught up in the middle,” they wrote.
Alex B., a 2011 graduate of Evergreen, shared similar thoughts.
“I was ashamed to watch as Professor Weinstein was allowed to be harassed and threatened by a campus community that he called home, all because he raised reasonable concerns about a potentially discriminatory policy,” the alumnus wrote.
Chris R. a self-described “observer” to the chaos, wrote to Bridges that: “You allow these ‘students’ to tell you to ‘get the fuck out of here George’, bully you into agreeing to demands, openly insult and dismiss you without consequence. Why should they show any respect for your office if you can’t even respect yourself. The idea of higher learning is to be challenged, to be ‘uncomfortable’, to provide a forum of open debate for differing opinions to be heard and discussed.”
“Colleges and Universities are meant to expand a students understanding of topics or beliefs rather then to narrow them,” he continued. “These young people cannot be prepared for the real world if you choose to shroud them from the reality of life by creating ‘safe spaces’ and emboldening them by conceding to demands like excusing them from turning in assignments on time.”
Bridges even received an email from the wife of an Evergreen alum who said her husband’s “degree now bears a stain of radicalism and disappointment as we approach graduation.” She omitted her name from the email “due to fear of retaliation.”
As to how the college handled all these emails, they were apparently forwarded to the vice president for advancement for follow up.
Read the emails in full here.
MORE: I attend Evergreen State College. It’s not racist. But it is delusional.
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