Monday, March 30, 2020

Campus Craziness: Evergreen State Edition

Because I have 2 sections of 12th graders, I feel compelled to let them know what's happening on campus.  The ethos of 'woke' has gotten completely out of control, and this incident at Evergreen State College in 2017 encapsulates much of what is going within the Liberal Arts on campus.  Weinstein was a Biology professor at Evergreen.  He was threatened physically, and eventually pushed to resign after this fiasco was over.

This assignment is geared to not only analyze the rhetoric of both sides, but also help students avoid  massive, permanent student debt.  Why would anyone spend money simply to get exposed to this idiocy?  This took place in 2017, and these types of 'woke' events have shown no signs of subsiding.  This bizarre campus journey has been documented here.

This is the assignment I gave to the Seniors today:
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For years, Evergreen State college practiced a ‘Day of Absence’, where the ‘people of color’ would voluntary leave campus to bring attention to their importance and role on campus. In 2017, the organizers of the ‘Day of Absence’ changed it and told the white people they had to leave. A biology professor, Brett Weinstein, objected to this change in a private email to faculty.

In March 2017 Professor Weinstein wrote a letter to Evergreen faculty, objecting to a change in the college's decades-old tradition of observing a "Day of Absence" during which students and faculty of a minority race would voluntarily stay home from campus to highlight their contributions to the college.  The announced change would flip the traditional event, asking white participants to attend an off-campus program while the on-campus program was designated for participating people of color.  Weinstein said this established a dangerous precedent:

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 underappreciated roles....and a group encouraging another group to go away. The first is a forceful call to consciousness, which is, of course, crippling to the logic of oppression. The second is a show of force, and an act of oppression in and of itself.

— Bret Weinstein, in a message to a campus email list

Please answer the questions after watching the video presentation below:
1) After watching the video, what were your initial impressions of what you observed?

2) Analyze the rhetoric of both the students and Prof. Weinstein. Explain what you heard, and if the rhetoric and word choices helped or hurt their arguments. Please be detailed and explain your thoughts clearly.


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