Evergreen State College Racism Protests

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Overview

Evergreen State College Racism Protests refer to a series of demonstrations organized by students at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington in late May 2017 to protest racism on campus. After refusing to participate in the “Day of Absence & Day of Presence,” which demanded that white students, faculty and staff leave campus for one day, Biology professor Bret Weinstein was targeted by activists who accused him of racism and demanded his resignation.

Background

On March 15th, 2017, Weinstein sent an email to a student protester named Rashida, in which he stated "On a college campus, one's right to speak -- or to be -- must never be based on skin color" (shown below).

On May 24th, students at the college protested at various locations on campus, where they shouted chants like "hey hey, ho ho, these racist teachers have got to go." During the protest, the official Facebook page for the The Olympian newspaper livestreamed portions of the demonstration (shown below).

That same day, a student livestreamed protesters arguing with Professor Weinstein in a campus hallway, during which several students ordered him to resign.^[2]

Developments

Online Reaction

That day, Professor Weinstein's brother Eric Weinstein posted several tweets criticizing "SJWs" for attacking his brother (shown below).

On May 25th, YouTuber Make Cringe Great Again uploaded a video of students yelling loudly at Professor Weinstein (shown below).

That day, student activists and supporters of Professor Weinstein began tweeting about the protests using the hashtag "#exposeevergreen."^[7] Meanwhile, evolutuionary psychologist Diana Fleischman posted screenshots of tweets by Evergreen College Students threatening and insulting white students who did not participate in the protests (shown below).^[4]

On May 26th, Redditor Galinskykid83 submitted a video by the Evergreen State College group Common Bread in a post to /r/videos^[3] titled "Evergreen State College group looks like it's a sketch from Portlandia." Within 15 hours, the post gained over 840 points (89% upvoted) and 390 comments. The original upload of the video was subsequently removed, but was reuploaded by YouTuber mscarpss (shown below).

News Media Coverage

On May 25th, The Washington Times^[5] published an article titled "Students berate professor who refused to participate in no-white 'Day of Absence'," which reported that students had taken over Evergreen College for the past 72 hours. Meanwhile, the local Washington news station King 5^[8] aired a segment on the protests against Weinstein, noting that earlier in the school year Weinstein had raised conecrns about proposed hiring policy changes that "would have race play a larger role in the hiring process" (shown below).

Also on May 25th, HeatStreet^[6] published an article titled "Student Mob Shrieks at Professor Who Objected to Event That Kicks White People Off Campus for a Day." The following day, The Washington Post^[1] published an interview with Weinstein, in which he revealed that he had been told by the Chief of Police that it was "not safe" for him on campus. The following day, Weinstein appared as a guest on Tucker Carlson Tonight (shown below).

Additional Videos

On May 27th, 2017, YouTuber bestof evergreen posted a compilation of videos taken during the protests titled "Student takeover of Evergreen State College" (shown below). Within 72 hours, the video gained over 500,000 views and 2,500 comments. In the coming days, the video reached the front page of the /r/PublicFreakout,^[9] /r/KotakuInAction^[10] and /r/The_Donald^[11] subreddits.

On May 28th, YouTuber Mitchollow uploaded footage of student activists demanding extensions for their courseworks without penalty to college president George Bridges (shown below). That day, The College Fix reported that Evergreen student activists sent a demand to President Bridges that the admnistration take down the "Student takeover of Evergreen State College" video, referring to it as footage "stolen by white supremacists and edited to expose and ridicule the students."