After the exciting spring of 2017 at Evergreen State College, which saw far left students take over the campus and demand the firing of a professor, you would think the school would want to be careful about going overboard on protests. But apparently, that’s not how things work at Evergreen. Over the weekend, Evergreen President George Bridges apologized for another protest that took place in the fall of 2017. From KGMI:
Evergreen State College’s President apologized for using taxpayer-funded resources to transport students to a Sumas berry farm for a protest in 2017.
Farm advocacy group Save Family Farming filed a complaint with the college in April after they say photos and videos showed college vehicles at the farm during protests over the death of a seasonal farm worker.
Evergreen President George Bridges says 6 faculty members have been strongly reprimanded and Save Family Farming’s Executive Director Gerald Baron says it’s a good start.
It’s not clear to me from how this is written if Bridges himself was involved in this protest or even knew about it at the time. In any case, I wonder what a strong reprimand looks like at Evergreen State. I’m guessing there’s a lot of winking and nodding involved but who knows. You would think a school already in the process of cutting staff because of a possible 20% drop in enrollment might be able to work up some genuine anger over another story that makes the school look like an anything-goes home for aging lefties.
The protest in question had a serious basis. An immigrant worker at Sarbanand Farms named Honesto Silva Ibarra was rushed to the hospital last August. He died and activists accused the company of contributing to his death. That led to the protest staged by Evergreen State professors. But the state Department of Labor investigated and found that Ibarra’s death was the result of natural causes (some stories say he was diabetic) and not attributable to anything the company had done.
State officials say a blueberry farm in northwestern Washington was not at fault in the death of a 28-year-old migrant worker in August but the farm is being fined for violations related to late meals and missed employee breaks.
The Bellingham Herald reports the Washington state Department of Labor and Industries made the announcement Thursday in the death of Honesto Silva Ibarra…
Ibarra fell ill while working at Sarbanand Farms in Sumas and was taken to Harborview Medical Center, where he died Aug. 6. An autopsy determined he died of natural causes.
So it’s a tragic incident but there’s no evidence this was the result of any kind of abuse by his employer. Anyway, professors obviously shouldn’t be using state vehicles for their personal protests.
School starts up at Evergreen later this month meaning we should soon get an update on the school’s enrollment numbers. Will the Mizzou effect result in a 20% decline that was anticipated back in February as a worst-case scenario? Or will the decline be slightly less severe (some have suggested a mere 18.5 percent)? We should know in a couple weeks.
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