Evergreen College was closed and partially evacuated last Thursday and Friday after authorities received a call from someone threatening to murder people on campus. Over the weekend, authorities received a new threat which prompted the college to be shut down again Monday. From the Seattle Times:
Police are investigating “new external threat information received over the weekend,” the statement said.
All classes during the day and evening are effectively canceled under “suspended operations,” the statement said. Staff will be present to provide services and ensure safety, and law enforcement will remain active at all hours, it added.
A determination hasn’t been made yet about whether or not classes will resume on Tuesday. With regard to the previous threat, the Seattle Times adds that authorities have determined, “no one was actively posting a threat.” How did they determine the previous threat wasn’t active? The story doesn’t say.
Meanwhile, condemnation of the student protesters has been nearly universal. The New York Times published an opinion piece last week and over the weekend published an op-ed on the topic titled “These Campus Inquisitions Must Stop.” Despite the headline, the story is pretty wishy-washy. It accuses Professor Bret Weinstein of taking himself too seriously when he is accused of being a racist and then told to shut up and resign. And the story overlooks most of the disturbing behavior student have engaged in. Despite that, in its final paragraphs we do get a glimpse of how bad things have become:
I asked [Evergreen College President George] Bridges about the epithets hung on Weinstein. He said that such terms are being deployed too readily and casually.
“Using the word ‘racist’ halts the conversation,” he said. “It just ends it. It doesn’t explore the beliefs, the values, the behaviors that comprise individuals.”
Isn’t he, too, being characterized as racist?
“Of course,” he said. “It’s just the way discourse goes these days.”
A better piece was published over the weekend at HuffPost. Written by a former president of the College Democrats of Maryland, the piece argues the progressive protesters shouldn’ be called “social justice warriors” because it sounds somewhat positive. Instead, he suggests they simply be called fascists:
The majority of Americans who utterly reject the ridiculous behavior of this growing group must not let the extremists control the narrative by characterizing their behavior as being politically rebellious or “on the right side of history.” Instead, this behavior must be portrayed as it truly is, as a shameful and pedestrian surrender to authoritarian political doctrine and mob mentality.
Considering this, “fascist” works fairly well as a label for members of the social justice mob. It drives home their authoritarian, ideologically-possessed mindset and tactics which can only be described as systematic brainwashing followed by witch hunts for any who would even think to diverge from the social justice orthodoxy…
I implore you to imagine what the university and police response would have been if conservative students had made similar demands in a similar manner. In this case, the students would have been ordered to disperse. They would have been disciplined or even arrested for not complying with school policy. This double standard starkly displays the danger of a far-left ideological mob that is exempt from otherwise enforced social and legal consequences.
One of the most interesting things about the Evergreen College story is seeing progressives come out of the woodwork who have had enough of the tactics being advanced by the progressive left on campus. We’ve had some of this before but the floodgates have really started to open in the past week.
Finally, if you missed it over the weekend, have a look at this interview Professor Bret Weinstein gave last Friday. It’s eye opening.
Update: The Seattle Times has a new story clarifying that the campus was closed over an abundance of caution and information received over the weekend, however authorities are not saying if that new information included a new threat against the campus:
Powers said law enforcement continued to review threat-related information received over the weekend, but wouldn’t elaborate nor indicate if a new threat was made. School officials will decide later Monday whether to resume classes on Tuesday.
I’ve tweaked the headline to make it clear there is “new threat information” though not necessarily a new threat.
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